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Finally one of the sitting women stood and came forward, holding out her hands. "I would say welcome," the woman said. "But this is hardly a place you'll rejoice to be. I'm Sephie Frank. And who are you, child?"

"I'm Gaia Stone," she said.

There was an instant hum of surprised voices.

"Bonnie's daughter?" Sephie asked, peering closely at her face. "Do you know where she is now?"

"No," Gaia said. "I thought she was here, in prison."

"She was with us for a few days," Sephie confirmed. "When she was first arrested. But then they moved her out of Q cell. That was when, three weeks ago? We saw her from a distance during the execution this morning, too, but not to talk to her."

"How about my father? Have you seen him?"

Sephie looked quickly at the other women, and their voices stilled. Someone coughed into her hand. Dread, like a double dose of gravity, pulled at her bones. It was possible the situation was even worse than Derek had told her.

"What do you know?" she asked quietly. Her voice dropped on the stone floor and rippled outward into an ominous silence.

Sephie stepped nearer and put a gentle hand on Gaia's arm. "Your fathers dead," she said. "He was killed trying to escape. Weeks ago."

"No," Gaia said. "It can't be true." Her knees sagged, and Sephie guided her to a bench. "I heard his execution was scheduled for next week."

The women looked at each other. "I'm sorry," Sephie said.

Gaia shook her head. "All this time, I've been serving, delivering babies. Certainly someone would have told me." Her voice faltered. Gould it honestly be true? Her sweet father, who sewed so beautifully, who brought a gentle laugh and a wise word to everyone on the street, who played the banjo like a devil was riding him, who radiated joy in the presence of her

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mother-- how could he be gone and she not know it? Gaia felt a shudder of pain knock through her.

"I'm sorry," Sephie repeated.

Gaia was dazed with disbelief. Her father could have suffered. She couldn't bear to think it. With no idea of where he'd been killed, she imagined him running wildly through the green wheat field toward the wasteland, his brown shirt flap' ping out behind him, his hat flying wide, his strong body bucking as shots drove him facedown into the waves of grain.

"Please, no," she moaned. She'd risked her life to come into the Enclave. To save him and her mother. And she was too late.

"But your mother's living," Sephie said.

"For how long? Isn't she scheduled to be executed?"

Gaia looked from one face to another, and their confusion gave her hope.

"We haven't heard that," Sephie said. "It's possible, of course, but no one here has heard that." She lifted her hand against her chest. "When you went after the baby, she must have been proud."

"How can you know that?" Gaia said, her voice tight.

"It's what she would have done herself."

The other women murmured their assent, but Gaia remembered her mother's silent message: do nothing. Now that Gaia knew her father was dead, it made more sense. Her mother had wanted Gaia to be safe, to protect herself.

"Gaia, everyone knows what you did today, saving that baby," Sephie said. "Even here we heard about it. You've forced people to think."

Gaia was in shock, but her eyes were adjusting more completely to the gloom of the cell, and now she made herself scan the features of the women around her. Brown-haired Sephie had a gentle, sad face that reminded Gaia of a full moon, with widely spaced gray eyes and a small mouth. This woman had

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known her mother, here, in this cell, and now, when Gaia needed kindness most, Sephie was offering it.

"Why are you all here?" Gaia asked.

Sephie s eyebrows lifted in surprise. "We're physicians."

"But why are you in jail?" Gaia insisted.

"Unbelievable," one of the other women said from the farthest bench. She was a white-haired woman with startlingly black eyebrows and a narrow nose, and she looked back my flinchingly at Gaia. Strangely, her lack of sympathy helped Gaia pull herself together, back from the edge of despair.

"Be quiet, Myrna," Sephie said. She sat next to Gaia on the bench and smoothed her skirt in a tidy way over her knees. "We're all accused of crimes against the state, like falsifying the results of genetic tests, or helping women who want abortions, or not killing faulty babies."

"You've done that?" Gaia asked, astounded.

"I say we're accused" Sephie corrected. "As accused doctors, we can be kept here at the will of the Enclave and brought out only when we're needed. It's absurd, really."

It sounded atrocious to Gaia. "Why do you cooperate?"

Sephie smiled, and several of the women shifted on the benches. "What choice do we have?" Sephie said. "If we refuse, we'll be executed like that couple today. It's not like we're in our childbearing years anymore. If it weren't for our expertise, we'd be expendable already."

"I don't understand," Gaia said. "Your families and friends must object to this. Can't they get you out?"

Sephie shook her head. "You're so naive, Gaia. I'm afraid you'll find not everything is rosy in the Enclave. Our friends are afraid, and rightly so. Besides, every now and then one of us is cleared and released. We live for that possibility."

Gaia gazed upward, toward the middle of the three windows where there was a distant square of gray sky. The more

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she learned about the Enclave, the more she felt betrayed. It was like they'd deliberately deceived the people outside the wall, making them believe life inside the wall was this ideal existence, this golden life, and all the while it was this beautiful place of cruelty and injustice. This place had killed her father, one of the best, dearest people imaginable. The Square of the Bastion had been filled today with a multitude of seemingly normal but utterly heartless citizens. Would she have be-come like all the others if she had been raised here, too?

"I don't understand this place," Gaia said.

The black-browed woman on the farthest bench gave a mirthless laugh. "Join the club," said Myrna dryly.

Gaia leaned forward, hiding her face in her hands. Her right cheek was swelling with a new bruise, and the scarred skin of her left cheek was familiarly rippled against her palm. Her new loss hurt far more, yet it had no outward scar. Her hair slipped forward around her like a curtain, and she gave a moan of despair. Her father. She felt a weight in her heart that made it hard to take a breath. It was possible that the one glimpse she'd had of her mother that morning might be the last she would ever have.

"There, there," a dark-skinned women crooned, rubbing a soothing hand on Gaia s shoulder.

The kindness triggered the tears Gaia had tried to hold back, and sobs wracked through her. Sephie tried to pull her against her for comfort, but Gaia curled away from them all and hunched in a ball along the wooden bench, her face to the wall. For a long while, Gaia was lost to blind, wordless misery. No light or tender words could penetrate her sorrow, while over and over she silently cried out for her lost father. Someone tucked a blanket around her and something soft under her head, and then sleep mercifully overtook her.

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Chapter 10 Blueberries in the Unlake

As A GIRL, Gaia taught herself to lie so carefully in her sleep that she never became entangled in her mosquito netting, but when morning turned the sky a rosy, dry pink and it no longer mattered to be still, she sometimes rolled, half asleep, until the skin of her cheek touched unexpectedly against the cool, gauzy material. Then the blind expectation of suffocation woke her fully. She would gasp before she remembered, oh, it's just the bed net. Then she would settle back on her pillow and stretch a languid hand upward toward the apex of the gossamer tent.

The summer she turned eleven, her parents moved her bed from the loft to the back porch where she could catch any breeze. One morning the wind chime was silent, and the great heavy water urn was motionless on its chain. Water had condensed on the outside surface, and the drops slicked together near the bottom for her to watch as they swelled and fell.

She slipped her bare feet to the worn boards of the porch and pushed the mosquito net aside to see the soft summer light infusing the air of the backyard. She could see the rain barrel

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at the corner of the porch, and beyond, near the slope, the laundry lines and the chicken coop.

A pullet had laid her first egg two days before, and Gaia was curious to see if she'd laid another. Lifting her blue nightgown to keep the hem from skimming the grass, she felt the coolness of dew brush her ankles. She had almost reached the coop be fore she saw that the door was unlatched and ajar.

With a sinking feeling, Gaia looked inside the coop. The pullet and another layer were both missing, though the six others were contentedly on their roosts. Seeing Gaia, the chickens let up a noise and started out past her toes, ready to feed on the bugs in the uncut grass.

Gaia flew back across the yard and jumped loudly onto the porch. "Mom!" she yelled. "Dad! I think someone stole two of our chickens." She hurried through the kitchen, crossed the living area and peeked behind the curtain to her parents' bed. Two lumps were sprawled among the blankets, and her dad's hand was curved upon her mother's shoulder. "Mom," she said again.

Bonnie lay closest to the window, hunched away from her father, and it struck Gaia that it was odd for her parents to be in bed later than she was. Uncertain, she clutched the curtain and drew one foot on top of the other.

"I think someone stole two of our chickens," Gaia said again, more quietly.

Then her mother did a peculiar thing. She lifted an arm over her eyes so her face was lost behind her elbow and she murmured one soft word: "Jasper."

In answer, Gaia's father put a kiss on her mother's shoulder and rolled to put his feet on the floor.

"Hey, sunshine," Jasper said to Gaia. "Let's let your mother get a little sleep, shall we? She came in late last night." He was

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already reaching for a shirt, and Gaia stepped back, letting the curtain fall.

She felt odd, as if she'd witnessed some small, silent, previously invisible language between her parents that excluded her, and then he came around the curtain, fully dressed. He smiled at her and rubbed his unshaven jaw.

"Get your shoes," he said softly, and she shoved her bare feet into her loafers.

Her father preceded her, his broad shoulders and easy gait conveying no sense of alarm, and with his calmness she felt her own uneasiness receding. He handled the latch for a quick inspection, then opened wide the door so she could see under his arm to the dim interior and the empty roosts. Dust motes flickered in a beam of sunlight.

"Definitely gone," he said. "And you re sure you locked the coop last night?"

She nodded up at him. "They were all there then. I'm positive."

His eyebrows lifted and he pushed out his lips, then took another look at the latch. "Well, whoever took them did it quietly. You didn't hear anything in the night?"

She said she didn't. While he collected the eggs, she looked back at the porch, to the bed net falling like a pale gray veil from the hook above. She realized then that some stranger must have been this close to her in the night. She took a step nearer her father.

"Don 't you worry," he said, his voice warm and reassuring. He cradled five eggs along one arm. His free hand came to her shoulder, and she linked her arm around his waist. "Let's go pick some blueberries for your mom. We'll be back before she even knows we're gone."

"Like this?" she asked, plucking at her nightgown.

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He smiled at her attire. "Definitely. Though we should take the hats. And buckets. I'll get them. Meet me around front."

By the time Gaia walked around the house, he was coming out the front door, minus the eggs, and carrying their hats and a couple of one-liter buckets. He held out his hand to clasp hers warmly, and then he began to whistle a low, complicated tune. Gaia felt a little shy in her nightgown as they passed the waking houses, but as they descended a narrow dirt path into the unlake, she liked the light, airy way the blue fabric floated around her knees. The brim of her hat created a familiar shadow above her eyelashes, and she could smell the sweet scents of the big bluestem, honeysuckle, nannyberry, and wildflowers that grew in sweeping patches between the rocks.

Once they passed below the bay of boulders, they were soon among the blueberries, and Jasper handed her a bucket. The first berry dropped with a metallic ping into the bottom.

"Who do you suppose stole our chickens?" Gaia asked. "Cant we do anything about them?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Go look for them?" It sounded unlikely as soon as she said it.

Her father adjusted his hat back on his head so she could see his face. His brown eyebrows were drawn in thick, expressive curves, and his jaw line was strong, with a shadow of stubble delineating it from his neck. His complexion, slightly darker than her own, was a rich tan color, and it ran deeper on his forearms where his sleeves were usually rolled back.

"Think about it, Gaia," he said gently. "Whoever took those chickens must have needed them a lot more than we did."

She was surprised. "But does that mean anyone could take anything from us and you wouldn't care?" she asked.

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He returned to picking berries. "No. Of course not."

There were many things about her parents that she'd begun to wonder about lately. A few weeks earlier, Gaia had gone to her friend Emily's birthday party. Emily and Kyle and Gaia had been the only three at the party, and Gaia had enjoyed herself hugely. Then, only yesterday, Gaia had discovered that Sasha and two other girls had been invited to Emily's party, too, but they had all refused to go if Gaia would be there. Gaia's mother had been completely unconcerned by the news. "Yes, I heard about those catty girls," she'd said when Gaia told her. "Emily s a real friend."

Now her father, too, was undisturbed by events that troubled Gaia. It should matter that people were mean to Gaia and stealing her family's chickens, so why didn't her parents get upset? Maybe, as her mother had once said, it had something to do with depth.

When she looked up at her father again, he had moved farther away, and beyond him the unlake sloped steadily down' ward. Clumps of birch and aspen flickered their oval leaves, but mostly the view encompassed brush and grasses and wild' flowers.

"Dad," she called. "Did you ever know anybody who knew what it was like when the unlake was full of water?"

He looked up from under the brim of his hat and waved her over. "No. It's been empty for going on three hundred years." He pointed. "They piped most of it south, and then the springs dried up."

"Who's 'they'? What happened to them?" She came nearer and picked a few more berries.

"I don't know, really," he said. He picked steadily as he talked. "There are other people out there, somewhere, because we still get a few wandering in from time to time. Maybe

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dozen in the last decade, like Josh, that storyteller over in Eastern Sector One. You remember him. One winter a horse came in, all saddled up, but it died shortly after."

"Really? What happened to its rider?"

"We don't know. I was a teenager then. We searched a long time out in the wasteland, but we didn't find anyone."

Gaia was fascinated by the possibility of other people and other times. "What was it like, I wonder. Way back."

Her father smiled. "In the cool age, people used to have satellites passing electrical signals all over the world, and cars and roads and all those things we see in the films at the Tvaltar, but that's all gone. It all took energy. Like magic."

"What happened to it all?" Gaia asked.

He put a hand on his hip and arched backward briefly. "The cool age ended when the fuel was used up, and it was too late for the masses to adjust, I guess. Crops failed. Some illness. A few wars. They couldn't move around what little food they could grow, I guess. It takes a lot to feed people, Gaia. We for' get. We're lucky here. There are smart people running the Enclave, and we don't do so badly ourselves outside the wall."

"Do we have to worry about running out of food?" she asked.

He smiled at her. "Not really. We'll hatch a couple more chickens."

"No. I mean all of us."

Her father wiped his forehead and resettled his hat. "I don't think so. We had the wheat ruined by hail once, but even then, there was plenty of mycoprotein."

"Emily told me mycoprotein is a fungus."

"She's right, really," he said. "They discovered it and re fined it back in the cool age. They wanted to have a food they could grow even in the dark, in case some catastrophic event

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covered the world in clouds. Now they grow it in the Enclave, in those big fermentation towers you can see."

She looked up the hill, over the wall, to the right of the obelisk and Bastion towers until she found a row of orange silos. "So, as long as we get along with the Enclave, those of us outside are safe, too," she said.

Her father leaned over and tugged her braid. "You re quite the worrier today, aren't you? All because we lost a couple chickens."

As she used to do as a little girl, she squinted to measure the white obelisk against the height of her outstretched thumb.

"What are you doing?" her father asked.

She lowered her hand. "I do it for luck," she said. "My thumb's the same size as the obelisk."

He flicked the brim of her hat. "Let's head back. Your mother should be up."

The winding path through the boulders and shrubs of the unlake was steep in places, and rarely wide enough for two. Gaia scampered ahead.

"Is Mom okay?" Gaia asked.

He nodded, following after her. "Your mother's fine," he said. "She just had a tough night."

"Did she advance another baby?"

"She did."

"Has there always been a baby quota?"

"No," he said slowly. She loved how he always answered her questions, no matter how involved they might be. "It was a gradual thing, I guess. Back when your mother and I were children, there were some new families who came to Wharfton. They weren't used to our ways, and they were rough. The parents drank, and I'm sorry to say it, but sometimes they neglected and hit their kids. People in Wharfton asked the

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Enclave to do something about it, so the Enclave took the worst abused children to raise inside the wall."

He passed a big berry to her. She held it on her open palm while he talked, watching the pale bloom of blue slowly warm to a deeper, shiny purple in contact with her skin. "That sounds okay" she said.

"It helped. A lot," he agreed. "But then, some people, especially families who were struggling to feed their kids, started wondering why some of their children couldn't go inside the wall. It didn't seem fair to them that the irresponsible parents were, in a way, being rewarded for abusing their kids."

Gaia understood that. It seemed, from the Tvaltar specials, that the girls inside the wall had everything she wanted, like books and pretty clothes and friends. "So then what

happened?"

"Well, the Enclave discovered it was better to take children who were very young. They adapted better. So they offered to take in babies who were just a year old, and they compensated the families, too." He rubbed his fingers together, signaling money. "It was all voluntary at first. But then, just a few years before your oldest brother Arthur -was born, the Enclave started requiring parents to bring their one-year-olds to special selections four times a year. It was a kind of competition, and the Enclave would take the strongest, liveliest babies."

Gaia wrinkled her nose. She scrambled up on a nearby boulder and swung her legs to dangle over the edge. "Didn't some of the parents mind?"

"Some did, of course. But others saw it as a great opportunity. You know, Gaia, in a way, each baby belongs to the community that supports its mother, whether that's a poor mother -with a bad temper, or a loving mother with patience to spare, or an ambitious mother who wants the best opportunities for her child."

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"I don't know," she said. "It kind of sounds like people in Wharfton were selling their babies to the Enclave."

He shook his bucket, looking inside. "It never really felt like that," he said slowly. "When Arthur and Odin were chosen to be advanced, it was a duty and an honor to advance a baby. We knew our boys would never lack for anything. And most important, they told us the advanced babies could come home to us when they turned thirteen if they wanted to."

"I didn't know that," Gaia said.

"That's because nobody ever has. They all choose to stay in the Enclave. The advanced children are genuinely happier with their adoptive families there."

Gaia gazed out at the horizon. "Arthur and Odin stayed, too, didn't they?"

Her father nodded slowly. "Later, maybe a couple years after you were born, the Enclave made advancement random, with a quota of the first babies born each month. It was more fair, and it's been like that for the last decade. I have to admit: in many ways, it works better than taking the babies when they were a year old. People are used to it now. And they still get compensated for each baby, too. It helps out the rest of the family."

"So you got paid for advancing Arthur and Odin?"

"We did."

Gaia glanced up at her father. "Do you miss them?"

He gave a lopsided smile. "Every day. But I have you."

"So why didn't Mom have more babies?"

"She's tried to, actually. But it looks like you're it for us."

Gaia pulled up a stalk of grass and broke off the bits of seed at the end. "Is that why she had a tough time last night? Does she not like delivering babies when she can't have any more herself?"

He took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair before

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putting it on again. "I don't know how to answer that, Gaia. Your mothers a very strong woman. I know that much. Last night, your mother and Old Meg went to help Amanda Mercado. She had twins."

"Twins!" Gaia said.

"Yes. Twins. Two boys."

Gaia's smile fell. "But, did she advance both of them?"

Her father inhaled deeply, and then sighed. "That's the thing. Amanda needed to keep one and advance the other. The quota this month is two, and your mom had already advanced one baby."

"So what happened?"

Her fathers lips compressed in a thoughtful line. "This must be confidential," he said. "Do you understand that?"

"I'll never tell," she promised.

"I don 't want you even to talk to your mother about it, not unless she brings it up first. Don't nag her with questions."

"I wont. I promise." With a mix of pride and curiosity, she clutched her bucket tightly in both hands.

"Your mother let Amanda choose which baby to keep," he said. "Both babies were small, but the first one born weighed a little more and looked a little stronger. The second was a tiny little frail fellow. Guess which one Amanda decided to advance."

Gaia closed her eyes against the sunlight and pictured two small newborn baby boys wrapped in identical gray blankets. Their eyes were closed, and they were waiting peacefully for a decision. The only difference was that one -was slightly bigger and rounder. She opened her eyes.

"Amanda kept the littler one," Gaia said.

Her fathers lips curved in a sad smile. "You re right. Why?"

"She thought-- " Gaia struggled for the right words. "She figured the bigger boy would do all right in the Enclave, but

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the little one, even if he doesn't make it, she can care for her' self, with all her love."

Gaia's father lowered his face and drew his hand over his forehead so that she couldn't see him well. For a moment he stayed there, unmoving, until Gaia worried that she'd said something wrong.

"Dad?" she said.

He lowered his hand and his smile was even more lonely than before. With his thumb, he gently brushed the tender, scarred skin of her left cheek. He had a way of making her feel like she was even more precious to him because she was ugly, and it always twisted her up inside.

"You re a wise little girl, Gaia Stone," he said gently. "I wonder what will become of you when you grow up."

She relaxed her hands on the bucket. "Do you think Amanda's boy in the Enclave will ever know he has a twin brother outside?"

Gaia's father leaned back on one hand. "I doubt it. They'll tell him he was adopted from the outside, that's no secret, but they won't know anything about his family out here."

"Did Mom give him the freckles?"

"She always does, to every baby she delivers."

Gaia glanced down at her own left ankle and saw the four faint brown marks.

"In honor of Arthur and Odin, right?" she asked.

"That's right. You've kept that secret, haven't you?"

She murmured her agreement. She hadn't even told Emily when she saw the same freckles on Emily's ankle, and she never would.

"Did you ever think I might get advanced?" she asked.

"It was a possibility."

"Until my accident?"

"Yes."

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Gaia looked at the freckles again. "I wonder if those babies will ever grow up and compare freckles and wonder why they all have the same ones."

"It isn't very likely," her father said.

"Why does Mom really do the freckles then?" Gaia asked.

Her father turned his face in profile, up the hill toward Wharfton. "It makes her feel better, I suppose. The same reason we light the candles at dinnertime."

"Do I have a twin inside the wall?"

He laughed. "No. Sorry. Just Arthur and Odin."

Gaia liked making her father laugh. "Do they know about me?"

"I don 't see how they could. I'm sure they'd like you if they knew you, even though you ask a lot of questions."

"I still don 't get what the problem -was for Mom last night," she said. "The bigger baby was the first one out, right? So she followed the law by advancing the second baby born this month, just like she was supposed to."

Her father held out a hand to help her jump down from the boulder. "True. But your mother gave Amanda the choice. That's the difference. For your mother, it was an opening in the law, and your mother normally follows the law to the letter. If she bends it even once, even a little, it makes her question the whole thing. Come on. Let's go."

Gaia led the way up the path again, thinking deeply. She liked that he thought she was wise, that she was trustworthy with secrets. She was pulling the threads of their conversation together into one, weighty question. When they reached the lip of the unlake, she turned to her father. "Did last night make Mom question whether it was right to advance Arthur and Odin?" she asked. "As if she had a choice?"

For the first time in her life, her father turned his back to her. He took a step toward the horizon and stayed there, silent.

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His fingers twisted in the seam of his pants and twitched there, as if he might absently fray a hole into the cloth. Gaia faltered, wishing she could take back her question.

"I'm sorry, Dad," she said quietly.

As he turned slowly to face her again, his eyes retained a lost, ashy glow. "You always have a choice, Gaia. You can air ways say no." His voice was strangely hollow. "They might kill you for it, but you can always say no."

She didn't understand his intensity, and he was frightening her. "What do you mean?" she whispered.

He took a long, slow breath and seemed to remember where he was. "It's all right, Gaia," he said. "There are some things, once they are done, that we can never question, because if we did, we wouldn't be able to go on. And we have to go on, every single day." He smiled, more like his old self. He lifted his bucket to click it against hers. "Your brothers are better off in the Enclave. We can still miss them sometimes, even though it was the right thing to let them go."

She watched him warily. Then he flicked the brim of her hat and fell into step beside her. "Come on," he said, his voice warm and coaxing again. "Those big green eyes of yours are making me hungry."

"Dad," she drawled. His nonsense made her smile. "They're not green. They're brown."

"Right," he said. "Brown. I get them mixed up. I beg your pardon."

By the time they arrived home, Gaia's mother was frying peppered mycoprotein patties. Gaia ran up the ladder to her loft to change while her father rinsed the blueberries and made coffee. With biscuits, honey, and blueberries crowding the patties on their plates, they went to eat on the back porch. Gaia looped the strap around her mosquito netting to clear it away, and they hitched three chairs forward toward the railing.

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The wind chime let out a faint, tinkling noise, and Gaia's gaze fell on one of the chickens under the laundry lines. It seemed like ages ago that she'd discovered the theft, and compared to other losses, it hardly mattered at all.

"Who do you think stole our chickens, Mom?" she asked idly. She smeared a bite of her patty in honey, and savored the peppery sweetness on her tongue.

"Somebody hungry," her mother said.

It was practically the same thing her father had said.

Gaia's mother looked untroubled and rested, and Gaia realized that her father must have taken Gaia away from the house on purpose to give her mother a bit of time to herself. Normally, such an idea would have hurt her feelings, but now it didn't. Wonder brought a new stillness to her, as if the whole round earth had paused for a moment. How wise my parents are, she thought. How kind they are to each other.

Her mother glanced over and smiled. "Not hungry?"

"No, I am," she said.

Her mothers eyes grew more perceptive. "Your father told you about the Mercado twins, didn't he?"

Surprised, Gaia shot her gaze to his. He nodded.

"You did the right thing," Gaia said.

Her mother took a sip of her coffee and held the cup comfortably before her lips with both hands. "You know," her mother said. "You don't have to be a midwife when you grow up. That's all right with me."

But Gaia looked past her to where the solid weight of the water urn was suspended from the rafter. The last drops of condensed dew had evaporated away, leaving the creamy surface smooth and cool. A quiet certainty settled inside Gaia, beautiful and blue and grateful, like her own invisible lake.

"No," she said. "That's what I want to be. Like you."

So her training began.

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Chapter 11 The Gilded Mirror

DAYS PASSED IN A NIGHTMARISH haze for Gaia. The bleak reality of Q cell was so complete, so utterly opposite to her memories of life outside the wall, that it seemed to obliterate her previous existence entirely. Her hair was cut. She was given a bed, a plate, a cup, and a spoon, and told to keep her things clean. A tasteless mycoprotein stew was provided for her three times a day, but Gaia had no appetite, and she absently shared her food with the other women, who were glad to eat her portion. Tired, grieving, and with no hope, Gaia hardly noticed the cell life around her, even when Sephie urged her to walk with them in the yard outside as they were permitted to do once each morning and once again after the evening meal. She kept expecting to hear word of her mothers execution, but there was no news.

The doctors were often called away during the day, and sometimes they came back animated and invigorated by the practical exercise of their skills, but more often they returned quiet and morose. Myrna, especially, was often called out, and she invariably returned in a grim, taciturn mood.

"Come, Gaia," Sephie said one morning. "I need you to assist."

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Gaia was sitting on the bench, staring in a glazed way at a bit of sewing that had been left in a pile, but she glanced up at Sephie's kind face. She tried to stir herself, knowing that Sephie had treated her with gentleness since she'd first arrived in prison.

"Yes," Sephie said, smiling and beckoning. "I've been told to bring an assistant, and it's time to expand your training."

Gaia stood slowly. "I'm allowed to leave?"

Sephie laughed lightly. "Apparently. Under heavy guard. We've been talking it over, and there must be something about you that the Enclave can't figure out. They're cautious that way. Clearly they would have had you killed by now, based on your crimes, but there must be some reason they want you alive. What could it be? Maybe they're saving you to use for leverage with your mother, or they're saving your mother to use for leverage with you. What makes you both so valuable, I wonder. You don't have friends higher up, do you?"

A flicker passed through Gaia's mind as she wondered if Capt. Grey had somehow negotiated for her life. She shrugged now. Life seemed pretty pointless to her at the moment, with her father dead and her mother on death row. What happened to her didn't much matter to her anymore.

"None of that," Sephie said firmly. "Up. We're going to deliver a baby. That should please you."

Gaia looked around automatically for her satchel, but then recalled they had taken it from her. Her watch, too. She stood slowly, feeling like her movements were underwater. Sephie linked her arm through Gaia's and guided her toward the door. "Heads up, now," Sephie said. "I knew you should have been eating more. You're weak as a new cat."

Gaia took a deep breath. "I'm not hungry."

"Well, then. Stand up straight and look like you can be useful. And try to straighten your hair a little."

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Gaia felt a ghost of a smile. "You sound like my mother," she said.

"Is that right?"

Gaia ran a tired hand through her hair, still unused to the short ends at the nape of her neck. "My mother wanted me to tie my hair back more often. She told me I called attention to my ... to myself by letting my hair fall in my face all the time."

The wooden door was being opened with a heavy, grating noise.

"She was right," Sephie said.

Gaia looked quickly out at the guards, half expecting to see Capt. Grey, but the men were unfamiliar. She hung back.

"No," Sephie whispered urgently, and gave her arm a sharp pinch. "Hello, gentlemen," Sephie said courteously to the guard. "My bag, please. I do hope you didn't forget the fetoscope this time."

Sephie passed the bag-- a heavy black item with large handles-- to Gaia, clearly expecting her to carry it for her, and then she started rapidly down the hall, leaving Gaia and the guards to catch up. The gray halls and staircases passed in a blur, and Gaia forced her heavy limbs to hurry after Sephie. At the last door, they were given two straw hats with distinctive gray and black hatbands and ordered to keep them on. When they finally stepped out from under the arch into a bolt of sunshine, Gaia gasped at the brightness of it. An effulgent wash of fresh air invaded her lungs, and she blinked back in surprise. She felt like she had emerged from a tomb, with all the shock and wonder of someone returning from the dead.

It was market day in the square, and noises and colors were vibrant on every side. It was easily ten times, no twenty times bigger than the simple exchange that happened in the quadrangle by the Tvaltar outside the wall. Tables and awnings filled the area around the obelisk, and the aisles bustled with

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people of every class, all reaching and laughing and exchanging money. A delivery boy with an overflowing basket of bread on the back of his bike rang his bicycle bell as he tried to weave through the crowd, and someone stopped him to buy a loaf. The hubbub of noise was merry and full of life. Gaia absorbed a quick impression of squawking chickens, bright yellow and green fabrics, and the shine of copper pans before she and Sephie were hurried down the street, surrounded by an escort of four armed guards. She noticed more than one curious glance in their direction, but Sephie walked as if she were oblivious both to the guards and the attention. She seemed to know precisely where to go, and when, after a few minutes of steady walking, they arrived at a blue-painted door, it was Sephie, not one of the guards, who rapped smartly on the door.

"Persephone Frank?" said a young man, opening the door.

"Who else?" Sephie said dryly, with a quick jerk of her head toward her guards.

"Thank goodness," the man said, shaking her hand. "Tom Maulhardt. I was afraid we couldn't get you. My wife Dora's having her first baby, and everyone says you're the best-- " He was cut off by a muted cry from above. He went pale. "This way," he said.

Gaia followed Sephie in and heard one of the guards close the door behind them. As Sephie was striding rapidly up the stairs, Gaia lingered in the foyer, reveling in the sensation of being out of her prison and away from the scrutiny of the guards. This was what she'd missed: freedom.

Slowly she slid off her hat. Glancing left, she was curious to see the brightness of a living room. This was more like what she'd expected from the Tvaltar specials. Sunlight streamed through enormous panes of glass, touching on a pair of yellow couches that bracketed a low coffee table. A glass chess set was poised on the table, ready for the next move, and with a pang

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she thought of her father, who had loved to play. The polished wooden floor was partly covered by a white carpet, and a TV was mounted on a wall between bookshelves. Gaia had never seen so many books in one place, nor such graceful, pretty sculptures. A bronze nude child, waist-high, tipped a watering can over her crouching sister, and a trickle of real water drib' bled out of the can.

"Hurry, girl," Sephie called impatiently.

Gaia lifted the doctors bag and hurried after Sephie. She followed the noise of the laboring woman, turning a corner and entering a bedroom that was as light and airy as the rest of the house. On an enormous, four-posted bed, a young woman lay panting, her mousy hair askew, her eyes wide with fright. Gaia was surprised to see no one else there: no supporting mother or aunt, no sisters making extra food in the kitchen or standing ready to help. This woman was more isolated than most of the mothers she knew outside the wall.

Sephie was already talking soothingly to the woman and taking a pair of gloves out of her bag. "Here, now, Masister Dora. You re fine," Sephie said. "Tie my dress back, Gaia," she said, handing her an apron. Sephie worked competently, helping to ease the woman into a more comfortable position and preparing to examine her.

"Are you staying?" Sephie said to Tom.

He took an anguished look at his wife, and nodded.

"Good, then be of use. Support her back. Move those pillows," said Sephie. When the young man still looked uncertain, Sephie spoke to Gaia sharply. "Gaia."

But Gaia was already moving, seeing precisely what needed to be done. It was like being with her mother, with all the familiarity of a progressing labor and the woman's fear and pain, and yet it was different, too. In her last weeks outside the wall, Gaia had been in charge, responsible for every decision,

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and it was a relief to slide back into an apprentice role. As Tom held Dora's hand, she grew calmer, and Gaia could see that the labor had not progressed as far as the cries she had heard as they entered the house had seemed to indicate.

"It's a breech," Sephie said abruptly. "Is she full term? Not early?"

Tom looked confused. "She was due next week."

Sephie nodded, frowning, and steadied the woman's knees as she had another contraction. Gaia knew that a breech birth, with the baby arriving bottom first instead of head first, could be more complicated and take longer. At least, with the baby full term, its hips were as wide around as its head, and it was less likely to get stuck. She'd helped her mother deliver half a dozen breeches, but she hadn't done it herself yet, and she was glad again that Sephie was there to know just when and how to turn the baby as it came through.

"It's a frank breech," Sephie said. "She's not too far along with the timing of these contractions. I think-- " she paused, still concentrating. Gaia watched her feel the woman's stomach, gently smoothing her hands around, with a confident little prod here and there. "Yes," Sephie said. "Let's turn it."

Gaia's eyes widened in surprise. "Can we?"

Sephie was already climbing onto the bed beside Dora. "Do you have any vodka?" she asked Tom. "And a hot water bottle? We need to slow this down."

Gaia was more shocked then ever. If Sephie was wrong, if she delayed this birth in some way, it could only be more dangerous for the baby. Yet, already Sephie was talking calmly to the patient, explaining that she intended to try to manipulate the baby upward in her uterus, turn it sideways, and then, gradually, turn it again so its head was downward. Gaia put her hands where Sephie told her to, gently and firmly identifying the little elbows and knees within the woman's distended

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belly. She had never done this before, never dreamed of doing it. She imagined the protest of the baby within, and feared the umbilical cord might wrap around the infant's chin or knees. But Sephie worked steadily, keeping Dora calm, letting her rest between contractions, and when, later, the baby girl was born smoothly, head first, Gaia was awed at Sephie's skill.

"She's beautiful!" Tom said, clutching Dora's hands. "She's a miracle!"

Sephie wrapped the child in a soft white blanket, passing her to Dora to hold, and Gaia had a flashing memory of the first baby she'd delivered alone. She, too, had passed a baby to its mother, but she had known she would take it away again within minutes. This child was home to stay, with loving parents and the promise of wealth and privilege. Why did it make Gaia ache with sadness, when she should feel triumphant?

Sephie was quietly cleaning up her belongings. Gaia looked through the black bag for a teapot, for an inkbottle and needle, without success.

"Don't you do any freckles?" Gaia asked.

Sephie looked up. "What do you mean?" She turned her head toward the baby. "I didn't see any. They may show up later."

It felt so strange not to honor Arthur and Odin like she ah ways had with her mother, but of course, Sephie wouldn't be familiar with her mother's pattern. "What about the tea?" Gaia asked.

Sephie's eyebrows lifted in curiosity. "What tea?" she asked, and waited for Gaia to explain.

As the silence stretched, Gaia finally realized that Sephie had no idea what she was talking about, and then guilt kicked in. She had promised her father never to tell anyone about the freckles, but now it had slipped out. Gaia spun toward the window, her mind reeling with a new possibility: the tattooed

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freckles were not only a secret way to honor her advanced brothers. Her mother signed those babies. With four carefully arranged pinpricks, she tattooed her own all-but-invisible mark on every baby she delivered. The tea itself was merely a distraction, a comforting, soothing ritual to honor the mother and midwife together. The soporific trace of motherwort in the mother's tea would leave no lasting mark. But that tattoo would last forever.

"What are you talking about?" Sephie said, crossing to the window.

"I meant the motherwort." Gaia tried to smile naturally at her, but she knew she was terrible at lying. "We give mother wort in some tea to the mother, and wash a little bit on the baby to prevent freckles. Don't you do that in here?"

Sephie eyed her closely one last time, and then turned back to her bag. "I don't know what you were told about mother-wort, but it has no effect whatsoever on freckles." She reached for Gaia's arm, and Gaia was surprised by the cool strength in the woman's hand on her skin. "They're superstitious barbarians outside the wall, no offense intended."

Gaia straightened, but Sephie was already releasing her.

"We're leaving now," Sephie said to Tom and Dora.

The couple were profuse in their thanks, but Sephie, looking tired, waved dismissively and reached for her hat. "May you have many more children to serve the Enclave," she said.

"Let me give you something," Tom insisted, following them downstairs.

"No. They'd only confiscate it anyway," Sephie said. She put on her hat and signaled Gaia to do the same.

"Please, Persephone. There must be something I can do. Dora and I, we're so grateful. I'm sure I'm no one to question the Enclave, but-- "

Gaia turned at the door and saw Sephie put her hand on

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Tom's arm. "No," she said seriously. "It's my privilege, coming here. I'm honored to be part of your lives at this moment. Enjoy your child and your beautiful wife. You owe us nothing."

Gaia felt Tom's eyes flick to hers, and by his sudden, sharp gaze, she had the feeling this was the first time he'd looked at her closely, despite all they'd gone through together. When his gaze settled on her scar, she could feel both his curiosity and his pity.

He cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable, and then his lips curved in a deliberate smile. "At least let me give something to your assistant," Tom said. "I'm sorry. What's your name?"

His effort at graciousness didn't fool her. When she didn't answer him, Sephie gave her a sharp look.

"She's Gaia Stone," Sephie said. "The girl from outside."

He nodded, as if several pieces had just clicked together in his mind. "The one from a couple weeks ago? With the convict's baby?"

"Yes," Sephie said.

Tom ducked slightly to put his hand inside a drawer in a small desk beside him. "It's nothing much," he said. "But please, take it." He extended his hand toward Gaia and she looked down to see the gleam of a small gilded mirror, the hinged type that ladies used when adjusting their makeup. She felt herself go pale, staring at it. What could she possibly want with a mirror? Was he mocking her?

Sephie took the mirror for her and thrust it firmly into Gaia's stiff fingers.

"Thank you," Sephie said. "You're very generous."

Gaia could not trust herself to raise her eyes, not without revealing the fury and shame she felt at being treated like a freak. Again. She fumbled for the door handle, muttering a good-bye. She pulled the door open. The four guards who lounged nearby in the shade looked over. She would have

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dropped the mirror and crushed it underfoot right there except Sephie grasped her arm sharply. "Behave yourself," she whispered savagely. She thrust her black bag into Gala's hands and took the little mirror.

The men came forward as Sephie said good-bye to Tom. Gaia's mind was spinning with all she had seen and discovered this morning: Sephie could turn a breech baby; the ankle freckles were a signature; Gaia was famous for saving the convict's baby; her service was of no more value than a glass trinket. She pulled the hat low on her forehead, feeling the faint scratchiness of the straw and wishing she still had long hair to hide her face.

Sephie fell into step beside her, and her pace was unhurried. The guards retreated slightly behind them, and Sephie linked her arm lightly around Gaia's waist.

"You re not bad as an assistant," Sephie said.

Gaia shrugged.

"But you've got something to learn about manners," Sephie said. "You embarrassed me back there."

"I embarrassed you!" Gaia said. She glanced back at the guards and brought her voice down. "He insulted me. What could I possibly want with a mirror? A chance to see my hideous face up close?"

Sephie looked at her strangely. "It was a token. He couldn't give you anything more significant. You're a prisoner. It probably belonged to his wife, Gaia. It was a gesture of respect and gratitude."

Gaia could not immediately accept what she was saying. She took her arm out of Sephie's so she could walk without the pretense of being her friend.

Sephie sighed. "Fine. But you might give people a chance. Not everyone is treating you like some hideous monster."

They reached the wide street that led up to the Square of the

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Bastion, and Gaia could hear the noise of the market as they approached. Now that they were getting closer to the prison, she didn't want to go inside, and she didn't want to waste the chance to look around her by being in a bad mood. She looked around at the passing people, the shop windows, and the pigeons that pecked in the gutters. Despite herself, she watched for the familiar form of Capt. Grey, and then she was annoyed with her disappointment at not finding him. She smelled bating bread, and turned to look for the source. Stupid, she chastised herself. She should have been looking for Derek's friend's bakery all this time.

She scanned the street actively, looking for brown loaves of bread, or a hanging sign with the familiar etching of sheaves of wheat, but there were none, and the scent vanished. They reached the Square of the Bastion again and the bustling activity of the market.

Barrels stood filled with cabbages and potatoes, and a stall was hung with dainty blue and white dresses for toddlers. Gaia could see delicate smocking on the front of one. My

father would love this, she thought with a pang. He'd relish the whole market, and especially the sartorial handiwork. She owed it as a tribute to him to live as fully as she could, even as a prisoner.

She saw apples, and even, on one carefully displayed plate, six oranges. A seventh had been sliced in wedges. She had never eaten one, but she'd seen them in a picture book. Now the bright color called to her like a magnet, drawing her in.

They passed so close that Gaia could smell the sliced wedges, and her hunger became so keen that saliva flowed around her teeth.

"Are they really oranges?" Gaia murmured to Sephie.

Sephie turned briefly in the direction Gaia was looking.

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"They're outrageously expensive," Sephie said. "Usually the owners of the orange trees eat them all themselves, or give them as gifts to the Protectorate family. But once in a while there are a few for sale. You getting your appetite back?"

"Yes."

"Good. I was beginning to worry."

The guards, now that they were so close to the prison, sup rounded Gaia and Sephie again, but not before Gaia saw a red-clad girl step up to the orange seller.

The girl took out a purse of coins, and as the guards nudged Gaia along, Gaia kept gating back over her shoulder, watching the exchange. When the girl reached for one of the oranges, her hood fell back slightly and sunlight gleamed off her blond hair: Rita. She was the girl who had tried to advise Gaia during the execution, the one who had warned her to keep quiet.

Gaia stumbled against a cobblestone, and Rita looked up. For one instant, her dark eyes met Gaia's gaze, and her mouth rounded in a silent O.

"Careful there," Sephie said.

One of the guards steadied Gaia from behind and hustled her toward the arch. Gaia lost sight of Rita, but as she replayed the moment in her head, she thought she recognized a glimmer of pity in the other girl's eyes. Or had it been sympathy? Perhaps Sephie was right. Perhaps Gaia, in her quickness to assume people were mocking her, failed to interpret how people really looked at her.

Gaia lowered her head as the shadow of the arch fell upon her. She handed back her hat and was escorted deeper into the prison. Soon she and Sephie were back in Q cell, but even when the heavy wooden door was shoved loudly closed behind them, Gaia knew she was no longer lost to the despair that had gripped her at the news of her father's murder.

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She had rediscovered what it was like to be alive and hungry.

She had realized that the freckles were more than just a tribute to her brothers.

She was going to survive this internment and find a way out.

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Chapter 12 A Pigeon Visits

THAT NIGHT, GAIA ate her first full meal in weeks. The image of the oranges haunted her, and the memory of the sweet scent was like a mist of pure color before her nose. She craved one of those oranges so badly it was like an illness. And this made her laugh.

"What's so funny?" Sephie asked.

"I could about kill for an orange," Gaia said.

The doctors laughed, and the sound was an unaccustomed counterpoint to the noise of their spoons gracing their plates. As Gaia ate her beef-flavored stew, she fingered the little mirror that Sephie had returned to her, flipping it over, thinking of how much her life had changed in such a short time. Less than three weeks before, she'd seen such luxuries as those in Tom and Dora 's home only at the Tvaltar, with a sheen of glamour and impossibility. She'd never guessed that oranges could be available for a price in an open market five kilometers from her home. She'd never known a breech baby could be completely turned in the womb. She had still believed both her parents were alive. This was a different world inside the wall, cruel and enticing both.

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"It's a pretty bauble," one of the women said. Her name was Cotty, and her soft black hair curled thickly around her lined face. She picked up the mirror now, eyeing herself in the glass, and she made a little primping motion with her bangs that made Gaia smile.

"Keep it," Gaia said.

"Oh, no. I couldn't."

"I have no use for it," Gaia said.

Cotty handed it back, patting Gaia's hand in the process. Cotty's fingers were a rich, even brown, several shades darker than Gaia's tan hand. "Don't say that," Cotty said. "Everything has value in here. You 11 see. You can trade it for something you want."

"Maybe with a guard," Sephie said. "For food. Or knitting yarn."

"Or a novel," Myrna added.

Gaia held it doubtfully. "How was your day?" she asked Myrna politely.

Myrna's striking black eyebrows lifted while she slowly took another bite of her bread. "I performed a surgery on a burst appendix, thank you very much for asking."

Gaia thought at first she must be joking, but Sephie asked her a question or two about the procedure, and Myrna answered curtly.

"Gaia was a steady assistant today," Sephie said. "You should take her with you next time. Teach her a thing or two."

Myrna's level black eyes studied Gaia for a moment. "They should have left her outside the wall where at least she could do no harm to anyone that matters," Myrna said.

Gaia s resentment flared, but she did not respond.

"Really, Myrna," Sephie said mildly. "Give her some credit."

"Who's been tending the mothers in my sector since I was arrested?" Gaia asked.

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Cotty, Myrna, and Sephie exchanged glances but didn't speak.

"Haven't any of you been going out?" Gaia asked more urgently.

Sephie set a hand on Gaia's knee. "Be calm, Gaia. None of us has ever gone outside the wall. That's nothing new."

"But then, who's taking care of my deliveries?" Gaia asked. "Did the Enclave send out some other midwife?"

"There must be half a dozen midwives out there," Myrna said carelessly.

But Gaia shook her head. She and her mother had been the only midwives in Western Sector Three, and they were often shorthanded.

"Perhaps-- " she began, thinking aloud. Could the mothers be going to Western Sector Two to find a midwife? Did they go into labor alone, with no help? She shook her head, frustrated, and with her last bite of bread she stood to pace the room. Stuck here in prison, she was no good to anyone.

Above there was a fluttering at the window, and Gaia looked up, startled to see a pigeon sitting on the ledge of the center window. The other women made no comment, as if it would take more than a pigeon to rouse them from the protective apathy that cocooned their hearts. Gaia secretly hoped the bird would fly in and stir up the gloomy cell with its flapping wings and chaos, but it merely hopped on the sill, made a squawking noise, and flew away again.

Gaia turned slowly to see the women: Cotty, Sephie, and Myrna sat on two benches, the last crumbs of their dinners before them. Four other women rested on the other two benches, none of them speaking.

"When's the last time any of you looked out those windows?" Gaia asked.

They looked at her, and then their faces turned upward.

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Myrna muttered something that no one answered. Gaia walked to the nearest bench, and bent to look beneath it. Sephie cleared her feet out of the way.

"What are you thinking?" Sephie said.

Gaia gave the bench a little pull, and then a little shove. It had been nailed to the floor, but the nails were rusted and old. If she could get out that window, she could search for her mother again. "Get up," she said, and Sephie and Myrna stood.

"I don't believe this," Myrna said.

Gaia gave the bench a good kick, and it rattled free from its nails. "Help me," Gaia said, and Sephie took an end of the bench so they could carry it over beneath the third window.

By now the other women were up, examining the other three benches. Two were securely bolted down, but the last was soon wrenched from its old nails. The excitement in the cell was palpable as they carried the second loose bench under the window, too.

Gaia looked up at the windows, judging their distance above the floor of the cell to be five meters or higher. Each bench was a couple of meters long, but stacked on each other, they would only come as high as Gaia's chest.

Myrna was the first to go back and sit down. "Tell me when any of you grows another two meters," she said.

But Gaia wasn't ready to give up. She hauled one bench to the corner and tipped it up. Then she angled the lower edge out slightly to create a makeshift ladder. Bracing herself against the wall, she climbed the tipped underbelly of the bench, standing unsteadily on the top edge.

"Don't fall," Sephie said.

"Go ahead and fall," Myrna said. "Cotty here will sew you up. Just don't break the bench or we'll have nothing to sit on."

Gaia climbed back down and looked closely at both benches, seeing if the answer lay in breaking one or both of them, and

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constructing a ladder from the pieces. But she had no nails, and no tools, and the benches were sturdily made. She looked up again longingly at the windows.

Then Cotty made a little coughing noise from the doorway to the bedrooms.

"Would these help?" she asked. She held two blankets, and Gaia knew there was one for each of the prisoners, a total of eight in all.

"Wait, Gaia. Do you know what's on the other side of that wall?" Cotty asked.

"Is it any different than what's in here?" Myrna asked.

Gaia ignored Myrna's pessimism and answered Cotty. "Does it matter? If we can look out, we can climb out. We'll find a way."

What seemed impossible gradually began to change. They had to stop when it was time for the evening walk, but afterward they continued. Working together, Sephie, Cotty, and Gaia experimented with tying the two benches together, overlapping the wood and wrapping the blankets tightly around them. The squares of sunlight that shone through the windows lifted along the wall toward the ceiling and then vanished as the sun went down. Evening gloom filled the room before at last they leaned a solid structure into the corner of the cell. It reached more than three meters high, but fell short nearly two meters from the window. The distance was daunting.

"It's all right," Gaia said. "Myrna, go listen at the door. Sephie and Cotty, help me up."

She climbed gingerly up the benches, gripping hard at the wood and digging her knees into the blankets' folds. She could smell the cool, gritty stone of the wall against her face and once, when her balance shifted, she could feel the whole structure begin to fall away.

"Push it in!" she said urgently. "Hold it against the wall."

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The other women came to help, too, steadying the structure from below. Gaia caught her breath, and turned, keeping her back to the wall. Sweat broke out on her face and neck as she slowly straightened, standing on her heels on the uppermost ledge of the tied benches. Her eyes were still a good ten centimeters below the edge of the window, but now she lifted her left hand, holding the mirror shed received that morning, and extending her arm upward, she was able to look into the bit of glass, and out to the violet sky and the roofs of the twilit city.

Gaia gasped with pleasure and amazement, instantly forget' ting her precarious footing.

"Can you see anything?" Sephie asked from below.

"Yes. The city," Gaia said. "And the sky."

Below, the women murmured their approval and excitement.

"Can you reach the window?" Cotty asked.

Gaia nodded. "If I turned, I could, I'm sure, but I can 't turn while I'm up here."

"Is there anything to attach a rope to?" Cotty asked.

Gaia squinted into the mirror, inspecting the edges of the opening. "I don' t know."

"Come down. Quickly," Myrna said. "The guard's coming."

Gaia scrambled down in a panic.

"Hurry!" Sephie said.

All eight women tore at the blankets, pulling them apart, and they dragged the benches breathlessly back to their old places. "Quick, you there," Sephie said, pointing. "To your beds!"

Half the women fled so that when the guards came around the corner, there were only a few women left sitting in the dim common room.

Gaia's heart was racing. She kept her arms crossed, her eyes down, and in the dim light she saw a dark spot on her wrist. It was a narrow line of blood, and she hid her scratched

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wrist quickly beneath the sleeve of her other arm, applying pressure. "Persephone Frank?" the guard said.

Gaia felt Sephie stiffen beside her on the bench. Her round face had never looked so much like the moon, solemn and distant.

"Yes?" Sephie asked.

"Yer to come with me," he said.

Gaia looked up in dread, not knowing what this could mean. Myrna stood.

"What are you taking her for?" Myrna said in her dry, hard voice.

The guard said nothing.

"It's late," Myrna pressed him. "Will she be back tonight?"

Sephie turned and gave Gaia a quick hug. "Be careful," Sephie whispered. "Stay strong."

"Sephie!" Gaia whispered, suddenly afraid for her.

Sephie turned to hug Myrna, too, and her pale fingers clutched the fabric on Myrna's shoulder into gray puckers. Then the guard was taking Sephie's arm.

"Release me," Sephie said, wresting her arm free. "I'm coming."

Gotty began to sob, and the other women came from the bedrooms, disturbed by the commotion. "Sephie!" they cried.

But Sephie was preceding the guard out the door, her chin level, her calm expression steeled to endure whatever might come. The heavy door closed with a tight, suffocating bang.

"What will they do to her?" Gaia asked in a hushed voice, turning to Myrna.

Myrna shrugged, turning toward the corner, running a hand slowly along the wall.

"Myrna!" Gaia demanded. "What will they do?"

Myrna sent her a scathing glance. "Why ask me, idiot? I don't know anything."

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"But, don't you care?" Gaia asked.

Myrna turned away without answering, closed her eyes, and leaned her forehead against the wall. She lifted one heavy fist and rested it near her face, as if the only thing she could bear was to merge herself into the stone. In that one stoic, lonely gesture, Myrna revealed an intensity of suffering that stunned Gaia.

"Oh, no," Gaia whispered, refusing to believe that harm could come to Sephie. Sephie was so good, so generous.

Gaia sagged down upon one of the benches. Slowly the other women, even Myrna, went to their beds, but Gaia kept her gaze on the third window and the deepening purple square of sky. She didn't know what she was listening for, but she listened late into the night, not daring to think of her mother, hoping only that the guards would bring Sephie back.

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Chapter 13 Birthmarked

THE FIRST NIGHT AFTER SEPHIE was taken away, Gaia tried to rally the others to help with the benches again, but Myrna, sitting stubbornly, spoke in a low, sharp voice. "You're putting all of us at risk with your foolish games."

"But we could escape," Gaia said.

"You could," Myrna corrected her. "Or you could drop to your death on the other side. Even if you used the blankets to make a rope ladder, as I'm sure you've been thinking, the rest of us couldn't all climb up to the window. Some of us couldn't even fit through. As soon as the guards discovered your escape, the rest of us would be killed as accomplices."

Gaia looked around the room, seeing the truth reflected in the other women's eyes. She was certain she could escape. Positive. But how could she endanger the others?

"At least you have a shred of a grasp on reality," Myrna muttered as Gaia sat, her eyes on the windows above, her dream slowly fading into dusty ashes.

"It's all right," Cotty said quietly, leaning near to pat Gaia s knee. "We'll find another way out. At least you started us thinking."

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Or pointlessly, hoping Gaia thought, not certain whether the women were better off or worse than they'd been before she came.

Over the next few days, they heard nothing of Sephie or of Gaia's mother, not from the guards, and not from anyone they chanced to see when they went out of the prison to tend to patients. Gaia woke often at night, restless with grief for her father and anxious about her mother. In the lonely darkness, she would try to comfort herself with memories of happy times outside the wall, little things, like the fried eggs and honey bread she and her father had made for her mother s birth' day breakfast, but the images would evaporate until she was left with only the sound of Gotty breathing from the bunk opposite hers. Then she would return to thoughts of escape, and her mind would circle fruitlessly until exhaustion, near day break, would finally tumble her into a last, fitful cycle of sleep.

Weeks passed as Gaia became Myrna's assistant, often inciting her sarcastic tongue. Gaia never complained. The work was a distraction from the grief and fear that haunted her, and al' ways she hoped that she might learn something of her mother when she was out of the prison.

Twice they were lined up behind the fence outside the prison to watch other executions: one man was accused of smuggling a woman in from outside of the wall to hire out as a prostitute; another was accused of buying blood on the black market for his hemophiliac son. There were public floggings, too, for a teenage lover who was caught sneaking into a girl's home, and a woman who carelessly contaminated a vat of mycoprotein at the factory. Gaia winced with each whiplash.

But there were good things, too, Gaia found. Now and then, a guard would deliver small tokens to the doctors in the cell, items that led the doctors to think their work was appreciated and that soon one of them might be freed: a book, a small

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jar of honey, a skein of wool and new needles, and an anatomy chart.

Then once, miraculously, an orange was delivered.

"How could this be?" Myrna said, lifting the orange out of a small box and letting a green tissue fall away. She turned the fruit in the light of the window so that the porous peel glowed orange before the women. "Who would send this, and how could it make it past the guards without getting filched by one of them?"

Gaia reached for the orange sphere, wondering at its cool weight on her palm. She was reminded of what Capt. Grey had once said, that cooperation in the Enclave was rewarded, and it seemed to be true. "Maybe that man you stitched up yesterday owns an orange tree," she suggested.

Myrna lifted a card from inside the box and angled it toward the light. Farsighted, she tilted her head back slightly to read it. "It's to you. Gaia Stone, Q Cell. But it doesn't say who it's from."

"Me?" Gaia said, pulled, taking the card and pondering the small, neat handwriting. "Could it be from Sephie? Could she be free after all?"

Cotty reached for the orange, and Gaia passed it over, watching as the older woman lifted it delicately before her nose. "Who cares where it came from," Cotty said. "It's an orange. I haven't eaten an orange in years."

Gaia laughed. "Well, let's have it now." As if the orange were a jewel divided among them, the women held up their sections to the light before eating them. Gaia savored her section, biting it in two, letting the bright, juicy taste of it pucker every cell on her tongue before she swallowed. She glanced up to find Myrna still watching her thoughtfully.

"What?" Gaia asked.

"Nothing."

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But Gaia felt a shiver of warning along her arms. She knew what Myrna was thinking. Sephie couldn't have sent in an orange. And this token had nothing to do with how well Myrna had treated some patient. Someone had an interest in Gaia, someone with enough power to deliver an orange through prison walls.

Gaia bit through a piece of tangy peel. Who was it, she wondered. And why her?

One late afternoon, when Myrna and Gaia had finished delivering a premature little girl, Gaia glanced up at a trio of soldiers relaxing before a cafe and was startled to recognize one of them as Capt. Grey. She and Myrna were surrounded by four armed men, but Gaia hardly noticed the escort anymore,

"Hey!" he said.

"Sorry," Gaia murmured, and she paused to wiggle her heel back into her loose shoe.

Capt. Grey lifted a small white coffee cup, tipping his head back so she had a clear view of his fluid profile as he swallowed. To her eyes he looked thinner, but he wore his customary black uniform and broad-brimmed hat, and carried himself with his usual loose-limbed ease. If she had allowed herself to think of him at all during her weeks in prison, it had been to dismiss him as a cowardly cog of the machine, a man who would let an innocent baby get killed. But it struck her now as outrageously unfair that he was free while she was a prisoner. How dare he be enjoying a cup of coffee! With friends even!

"Guard! Hold there!" Capt. Grey commanded.

The soldiers stopped and came to attention. Myrna stopped too, and though Gaia was compelled to stay beside her, she averted her face.

"What is it, Captain?" Myrna said brusquely.

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Gaia could hear his boots approaching over the cobblestones, and still she kept her gaze studiously on a flowering vine that grew on the wall beside her. He brought a faint scent of coffee with him, a scent from freedom. A savage spike of jealousy twisted through her before she could control it.

"Has your apprentice been useful?" Capt. Grey asked, his voice quieter now that he was near. Gaia was struck by his cultured, smooth tone, so different from the harsher voices of the guards she'd grown accustomed to.

"She does tolerably," Myrna said.

Gaia was surprised enough to turn back toward the older woman. Her black eyes regarded her frankly from under her straw hat, and then she lifted her eyebrows faintly. This was the closest thing to praise that Gaia had ever heard from Myrna.

"I'll bring her back to the prison," Capt. Grey said.

Gaia looked up to see him nodding at the surprised sergeant.

"Proceed, Sergeant," Capt. Grey said decisively. "I'll be responsible for Masister Stone."

"Yes, Captain." The guard saluted.

Gaia absolutely did not want to be left with him, but she had no way to protest. She looked at Myrna in time to see her expression return to its customary ironic lines. With a peremptory huff, Myrna took the doctors bag from Gaia's grip, leaving her hands free of their usual burden. A moment later, the guards were in step around Myrna, and they were turning the corner. Their footsteps faded on the cobblestones, and Gaia heard a clink of china from the cafe on the corner as the rest of the world went on.

Gaia was left alone with Capt. Grey. It was unexpectedly painful to be standing in front of him, even though this was the closest she'd been to freedom since the dismal day she had

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been captured and taken to the jail. She looked past him, down' hill, wondering if she dared try to run, but a quick look at his agile physique reminded her he could easily stop her.

"You re doing well?" he asked finally.

At his quiet voice, she peered up into the shaded line under the brim of his hat. His blue eyes regarded her with the steady gravity she remembered from before, from back before she'd known what he was truly like, and a tinge of color rode high along his cheekbones. Why, she thought. Why do you care?

A breeze swirled her gray dress against her legs, and she instinctively smoothed the material. "As you see," she said coldly.

He pivoted beside her and gestured an invitation with his hand. "Walk with me."

"Do I have a choice?" she asked, and then she wished she could take it back. He didn't deserve to know she was angry with him.

But he simply murmured "Ah." When he began to walk, she was compelled to fall into step beside him.

It was a clear, beautiful afternoon, and they were gradually ascending a sloped street in one of the quieter residential areas, toward a neighborhood she'd never visited. The tinkle of a wind chime stirred from over a window. Purple and white phlox cascaded cheerfully over the top of a nearby stone wall. Sunlight sifted through the weave of her straw hat, casting freckles of light on her nose and cheeks that shifted, out of focus, as she walked.

When she'd first peeked into the Enclave, the physical place had seemed like a paradise to her, all white walls and purity. Then when she'd witnessed the first execution, she had been shocked by the brutality beneath the facade, and she'd believed there was nothing here she could trust. Gradually, on her trips with Sephie and then Myrna, she'd seen a practical

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side to the Enclave: the routine of the thriving market, the steady work of the doctors in Q cell, and the satisfaction and dignity that came with working well, even when they had little hope of freedom. Many hard-working, decent people kept the foundry, glass factory, and mills going to produce useful goods. There were things to respect here, lives that weren't all brutality.

This new area had a quiet loveliness to it, an inviting atmosphere that matched the heady scent of the honeysuckle. It felt older somehow, more settled, unhurried. The white of the homes was more of a cream color, and there were more shade trees and wider sidewalks. A park opened along the summit of the hill, and children ran after a soccer ball, their voices bright and intense. Though the area looked nothing the same, it kind of reminded her of the unlake. If she weren't a prisoner and he weren't a guard, they might have been two companions taking a leisurely stroll on a warm summer afternoon. But she was unwilling to let down her guard. This man was not a friend.

"I hope the orange was ripe," he asked.

"That was you who sent it?"

He slid his hand in his pocket. "A friend told me she saw you looking at them at the market." His voice dropped to an easy resonance. "Well, 'drooled' I think, was the word she used. I would have sent more, but they're hard to come by."

She remembered the other gifts for the doctors. She glanced up at his profile. "Did you send the yarn? The book and things?"

He met her gaze briefly. "I suggested it to the Protectorat. You've made a lot of people think, Gaia. He's had some pres-sure about the doctors in the prison lately, and sometimes little things help."

So he was responsible. She thought of the day they'd received the orange, and the way the mood in Q cell had lifted slightly since then. It was still prison, it was still horrible, but

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there was a little hope there now. A pigeon mingled among several wrens at the side of the road, pecking at crumbs, and she stepped passed them and up the curb. I should thank him, she thought, but the words stuck in her throat.

"I was put on the decoding detail for your ribbon,"' he added.

Her nerves buzzed with alarm. They had discovered, then, that the ribbon was a code. How long would it take to decipher it, or had they already? She glanced up and found his expression pensive.

"I should say, I was put on it at first," he corrected, his voice dry. "Then I was moved to a less sensitive assignment. Apparently, I'm not trustworthy where your case is concerned."

She peered ahead up the road and gripped her hands together before her. "I should be grateful, I suppose," she said.

"Why is that?"

She shrugged and let sarcasm tinge her answer. "With your keen mind, you probably would have deciphered it in a few days."

"So you knew it was the record?" he asked.

She'd made a mistake, she realized. "No," she lied.

"Do you know what it says?" he asked.

She folded her arms around herself "Why are you asking me this? I have no interest in cooperating with you. If you want to coerce me, of course you can try. But I won't willingly tell you anything. The Enclave killed my father." Mentioning him brought back the hurt again.

Capt. Grey paused beside a stone wall, leaning both his hands on it and directing his gaze toward the view. "That shouldn't have happened."

She let out a strangled laugh. "No? You don't think so?"

"We make mistakes, too," he said quietly.

She almost laughed again. Did he realize how absurd he was? The Enclave didn't just make a few mistakes. The whole

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system was inherently unethical, and he was admitting only the tiniest chink. She followed the direction of his eyes and saw the gray, sloping expanse of the unlake, smoky blue toward the horizon, while at the near edge, the shabby houses of Wharfton were almost completely concealed behind the hill' side and the wall. Anyone living here and seeing this view regularly could easily overlook Wharfton and forget its struggling people even existed. The peculiar beauty of it seemed to mock her, as if it, too, thought her losses were insignificant.

She twisted her fingers together. "You didn't even tell me he was dead." Her voice came out with a catch. "You could have told me, anytime, but you didn't."

Capt. Grey turned slowly then to regard her. "I'm sorry," he said.

Until then, she hadn't realized that was what she wanted to hear. She knew it wasn't Capt. Greys fault, particularly, that her father had been killed, but someone should have told her, and he was the one who had been in contact -with her before. For an instant, she was near to tears, and then his apology released a pent up dam of questions within her.

"Where is he buried?" she demanded.

"I can find out."

"Where is my mother?"

His eyes flicked strangely. "I don't know," he said.

She took a small step toward him. "Is she still alive?"

"I don't know that, either. I haven't heard of her death."

"You don't know much, do you?" she asked.

The brim of his hat kept his eyes in a line of shadow, but he stood quite still, watching her intently. It occurred to her that his watchfulness could well be an act, a learned shield for his feelings when he was disturbed or uncertain.

"You know," he said mildly, "I'm making an effort to speak courteously to you."

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She folded her arms more tightly around herself. She cared nothing for his courtesy or his chastisement. "Excuse me," she said bitingly. "I forgot. I'm supposed to be grateful to you, aren't I? You sent me an orange. Consider us even."

His eyes narrowed. "I didn't-- "

She heard a sudden intake of his breath. His gaze was directed above and behind her, to where a pair of women had paused on a higher street to look down at them. Their white dresses shone in the sunlight, and even from the distance, Gaia could tell they were both very pretty. The older woman wore a wide-brimmed hat, but the younger woman was holding her hat by the strap, and her blond hair, unfettered, blew lightly in the wind, causing her to hold it back briefly with her slender fingers. A slight flutter of those same fingers might have been a wave of greeting, but Gaia couldn't be sure.

"Let's go," he said abruptly, and began walking more rapidly along the street.

"Who are they?" she asked. She had to lengthen her stride to keep up with him.

"My mother and sister," he said.

"But they-- " Gaia was confused. They were obviously of the wealthiest class, the sort of people whose families didn't give up their sons to the guard.

"Do they know the Protectorat?" she asked, wondering that they didn't ask for a favor to get Capt. Grey out of his service.

He turned toward her again, and she saw a flash of dark pain and anger in his eyes. Then he looked at her strangely, as if she'd said something odd.

"He's my father," Capt. Grey said.

Gaia came to a standstill, stunned. Capt. Grey. He was Capt. Leon Grey. Formerly Leon Quarry, the oldest son of the Protectorat.

"I know about you," she said wonderingly.

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He drew out the sardonic syllables of his reply. "Is that right?"

Capt. Grey took another two steps and turned to stop, too. He looked over his shoulder, but with the angle of the hill, they were no longer in view of his family. Gaia's mind was struggling to reconcile what she knew of this young man, this captain of the guard, with what she knew of the Protectorates son. The advanced one. Leon was the boy who had vanished from Tvaltar coverage years ago. Now she understood why he'd looked vaguely familiar when shed first met him: in her own childhood, she'd seen images of him as a boy, images ten meters tall. But he'd changed. Completely.

"I don't understand," she said.

His lips hardened in a straight line as he seemed to make a decision.

"Come," he said, and with that he took her arm and guided her forward again, more urgently this time, and at the next turn, he took her left onto a narrow road that led downward, farther away from the center of town.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked.

But he didn't answer. In a few more paces, he opened a metal gate by reaching inside to a latch, and guided her into a garden. Closing the gate, he led her down a slope, toward a back corner of the garden, under the shade of a lofty white pine tree, to where the coolness smelled of the pine needles, both the green ones above and the brown ones that formed a cushiony layer beneath her shoes.

"What is this place?" she asked.

"It's safe, for now," he said. His cheeks were flushed, and he took off his hat to wipe his brow. "The Quirks who own this place are old friends of the family. They spend most days in the Bastion, and shouldn't come home until late."

She peered past a row of apple trees and up a grassy slope to

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where a gracious, stone house was painted a clean, mellow cream. The white tile roof and arched windows created a welcoming picture, and though it was far from fancy, the simple elegance made her guess that this home and private garden were even more valuable than Tom and Dora's pristine white home. Purple and yellow flowers proliferated in abundance, proof that water was used here to assure decoration, and white boulders dotted the area in a harmonious, random pat' tern, providing natural places to sit.

A high, stone wall protected the garden on three sides, and the fourth side was open to a cliff with a spectacular view of the unlake and the distant southern horizon.

"Stay back," he said, when she would have walked nearer to the cliff. "We don 't want to be seen."

She glanced down, then stepped back into the shade of the pine. She turned to Capt. Grey, and her amazement hit her again.

"I cant believe you re Leon Quarry," she said.

"I thought you knew."

She shook her head. "How would I? You're completely different from the last time I saw you on the Tvaltar. What happened to you?"

His neat fingers clenched the rim of his hat in his hands. "I joined the guard."

There was so obviously more to the story that she almost laughed.

"What does the Protectorat's son want with me?" she said.

He peered at her. "It wasn't an accident that I saw you by the cafe. I've been waiting for you. I know you have some answers we need, and I think I can help you," he said.

She lifted her eyebrows, doubtful.

"Listen, Gaia. The Enclave is getting ready to interrogate you for the last time," he said. "It won't be me. They have an

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expert. They want to know about the ribbon, and they want to know about the ink."

"The ink!" she exclaimed.

"There was no pen in your satchel, but they claim the ink bottle is evidence you wrote notes at a birth, information that was transferred to the permanent code on the ribbon later."

"But I don't have any notes," she exclaimed. "I don't know anything about a code."

"Gaia," he said, coming nearer. "They're deadly serious. If you know anything, anything at all, they'll get it out of you. It's far, far better to cooperate with them right from the start. They reward loyalty. They always have."

She staggered back, bracing herself against the black trunk of the pine, feeling a bead of sap against her thumb.

"I don't know anything," she insisted.

His mouth was closed in a straight line. "Then you'll die."

Gaia instinctively clutched a hand to her chest. He hardly seemed to care what he was saying, and yet he'd brought her here on purpose to warn her. It made no sense. She scrambled for a solution. She would have to leave the Enclave. Immediately. She would have to come back later for her mother since she wouldn't do her any good dead. She glanced to her left, toward the cliff. Would it be any worse to jump now, and take her chances running away from Capt. Grey? "Can't you let me go?" she asked. "Right now?"

He shook his head. "Even if I did, orders are to shoot any unescorted prisoner on sight. You'd be dead in five minutes."

She hesitated, indecisive. "If I tell them something," she said in a small voice. "I don't see how it could help, but if I tell them something, will they let me go?"

Capt. Grey lowered his face into his hand, pressing his fingers with visible pressure against his forehead. His hat dropped softly to the ground. "This can't be," he said in a low voice.

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His reaction only made her more afraid. "Wait, Captain. Please. There has to be a way out of the Enclave."

He turned pained, angry eyes to her. "What do you know?" he said. He grabbed both her arms, pushing her backward until her foot hit against a root and she stumbled. Her hat knocked back and fell to the ground. He gripped her harder. "For your own sake. Tell me!" he insisted.

It was her parents' secret. She had promised never to tell. How could she know telling wouldn't make things worse?

He shook her again. "Gaia, tell me!"

"The freckles," she said.

His arms loosened infinitesimally, but his expression remained urgent. "What do you mean? What freckles?"

"We put a pattern of freckles on each baby," she said. "I don't know how it would help. It would only track some of the advanced babies back to me and my mother. I guess to Western Sector Three."

His grip loosened further until he was just holding her. "What are you talking about?"

She instinctively angled her foot outward. "It was in honor of my brothers. I didn't realise it could be important until recently," she said. "Whenever a baby was born, my mother would sit with the mother afterward for a bit, drinking tea. She would have me put pinpricks of ink in the baby's skin. It was part of my apprenticeship."

"A tattoo? Did she write anything down? Did she have the ribbon with her?" Capt. Grey asked.

She shook her head. He released her, but stayed near, his expression puzzled. She reached up to rub her tender shoulders where his strong grip had hurt her.

"Can you show me?" he asked. "Do you have the marks yourself?"

She stepped into the sunlight, and bracing her shoe against

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a boulder, she smoothed her skirt up her shin to expose her left ankle. Pointing, she traced the area on the inside of her left ankle, where the smooth, tawny skin was marked by four seemingly natural freckles in a simple pattern.

"Four dots," she said. "Three in an almost straight line, and one farther below. Like the three stars of Orion s belt and one for the point of the sword."

"They're the same on every baby?" he asked.

But before she could answer, Capt. Grey was moving.

He pivoted before her to sit on the boulder and propped his left ankle on his right knee. With one rapid movement, he shucked off his left boot. A black sock followed, and then, al' most savagely, he pulled up the black leg of his pants to expose his ankle.

There, faint but clearly visible, were three freckles arranged in a line, and a bit lower, to the left, was a fourth. Gaia stared, unbelieving.

"Fm from outside the wall," Capt. Grey said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Her eyes shot to his and held. "My mother was there when you were born," she said. "She birthmarked you." Her mind

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scrambled to put it all together. Her mother had advanced Leon into the Enclave. "What's your birth date?" she asked.

He blinked slowly in her direction. "My birth date? It's April fourteenth, twenty three ninety," he said. "Why?"

She was both disappointed and strangely relieved. "You re not my brother," she said, and warmth tinged her cheeks. "You re the same year as Odin, but a different day."

He closed his eyes briefly. Gaia felt an overwhelming urge, a compulsion to trace her mothers mark, and she gently reached forward to touch his ankle. He winced back, looking up at her curiously.

"I'm sorry," she said, withdrawing. Her finger tingled from the feel of his skin.

"Do you realise what this means for me?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Do you have any idea who my parents are? My biological parents, I should say."

She shook her head again. "I'm sorry. No."

"The information wouldn't be in that ribbon, would it?" he asked.

"It could be," she said, hesitating. She locked pleading eyes to his. "I don't know the code," she said. "Why does it matter who your biological parents are? You were raised in here. You said yourself your father is the Protectorat. What could be better than that?"

He was putting his sock and boot on again swiftly.

"I'm sure you remember the Protectorat Family Special of How We Are Family," he said in a tight voice. "The Protectorat's first wife couldn't have children, so they adopted a son-- me." He stood to stomp the boot on. "Then my adoptive mother died, and my father married a second wife, Genevieve, a fertile woman who gave him three children of his own."

Gaia was thinking quickly. "So those women you called

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your mother and sister today. They're technically your step' mother and stepsister, through adoption. Right?" she said.

"Technically. But wave your magic wand, little Gaia. We're family" he drew out the last word, as if it were written all in capital letters with music in the background.

She drew back slightly, disturbed by his dark sarcasm. "I'm not sure you really know what a family is, Leon," she said quietly.

He let out a laugh. "No kidding. Thank you. And it's 'Leon finally. There's a breakthrough."

She drew her arms across her chest. "I don't understand you," she said.

He ran a hand back through his dark hair and frowned at her. "It doesn't matter about me," he said. "What you need to understand is that the freckles will only make them more desperate to decode the ribbon. The freckles are like a brand."

Gaia was shocked. "You're going to tell them?" she asked, incredulous.

He turned to face her, his eyes piercing into hers. "No. You are," he said.

She backed away from him. "I am not."

"You are," he insisted. "You have to convince them you're cooperating. You have to try to unravel the code. Don't you see it's your only chance? If you resist, they'll kill you. But if you help them, they'll see how valuable you are. Think of Sephie."

"What about Sephie?" she asked.

He straightened, his expression surprised. "They released her," he said. "Persephone Frank is back home with her family. She's practicing medicine as if nothing ever happened. Didn't you know?"

She let out a laugh of astonishment. "I don't believe you."

"It's true. I could show you, but we don't have much time."

But Gaia was stupefied.

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"She told them to look for the tea and the motherwort," Leon continued. "She convinced them you have knowledge you re not consciously aware of yourself."

"She betrayed me?" Gaia asked.

Leon shook his head, trying to explain. "No," he said. "She cooperated. She cooperated, and they let her go."

Gaia struggled to see it from his point of view. "But you said yourself it's like a brand. If I tell the Enclave about the freckles, they'll be able to identify all the babies advanced by my mother." Something puzzled her. "But don 't they know that already? Don 't they have their own records?"

He shook his head. "They know which people are advanced, obviously. That's no secret. And they have their birth dates. But they don't know their birth parents, or what part of Wharfton those parents are from."

"And the people with the freckles?" she asked doubtfully. "Would it help them?"

He twisted a twig of pine from the tree above him, and fiddled with the needles. "I suppose they'd be even more careful not to fall in love with each other," he said.

"What do you mean?" she asked, affronted.

He shook his head, frustrated. "People here, inside, who were advanced from outside are discouraged from marrying each other. It's a kind of civic duty for an advanced person to marry someone who was born inside the Enclave, and in a similar way, advanced people have become desirable as spouses to the people born inside. Are you with me?"

"It sounds like you think people can control who they fall in love with," she said.

"It's not really like that. It's possible for two advanced people who fall in love with each other to marry, as long as the genetic screening shows they're not related, but it's considered a waste of their genetic diversity." He closed his eyes, shaking

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his head. "Our genetic diversity," he clarified. "I'm one of them. One of the advanced."

It sounded to her like he was still grappling with the basics of his identity.

"Didn't you realise you were from outside the wall?" she asked. "You knew you were adopted." She watched a faint ruddiness rise in his cheeks.

"Until five minutes ago, I thought I was my fathers bastard," he said. He twisted the pine needles into a tangle and let them fall.

"And was that worse?" she asked softly. "To be a bastard from inside the wall?"

He'd been looking away, but now she saw him refocus on her, and his lips curled in a kind of self mockery. "You don 't miss much, do you? It was worse. I'd by far rather be a legitimate nobody from the outside than be the Protecorat's bastard."

"And that's saying something," she said.

He let out a brief laugh, and looked at her, his eyes warming with wary gratitude.

"You could still be the Protectorates bastard, but from out' side the wall," she reminded him.

"Not if you know him. He would never touch a woman from outside the wall."

A breeze moved through the pine needles with a soft, rushing noise, and Gaia heard a bird make a clicking noise in the garden.

"Fm sorry," he said quietly. "That's how he thinks. Not how I do."

"It's all right."

She looked down at her hands, -wondering why she understood him, why it was becoming easier to talk to him, even about things that were intensely personal. He wasn't who she'd thought he was, not underneath.

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"Why Orion?" he asked. "Why not some other constellation?"

She braced her foot against the boulder again and looked at the little marks on her own ankle. "Orion's my mother 's maiden name." She spoke slowly, pondering the design. "You could see the Orion tattoo there your whole life and never guess it means anything."

"Until you know," he said. "And then it means everything."

She nodded.

When she lowered her foot to the ground, she felt a strange tingling in her ankle, as if the freckles on her skin there were somehow aware of the matching freckles concealed again now on his ankle. Does he feel it too? She wondered.

"We need to go," he said. He lifted both hats from the ground and brushed the pine needles off before he offered hers to her.

"Thank you," she said.

He gave her a long, unsmiling look and spoke gently. "My pleasure."

An unfamiliar awkwardness gripped her, coupled with a tight tug in her lungs, and she reached instinctively for her missing locket watch. She found only the buttons of her dress and touched them self consciously.

"That reminds me," he said. He pulled her locket watch out of his pocket and held it toward her. "We're finished with this."

She frowned at the familiar object in his hand, hesitating. "You keep it."

"Why?" he asked. "It's yours. It still works. I kept it wound for you."

She shook her head. "It belongs to a free person. I have no use for it now. Besides-- " She couldn't say it, but the object was defiled for her, ruined by the unknown eyes that had examined and prodded it.

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Leon slowly closed his fingers over the watch and slid it back into his pocket.

"Gaia," he began. "You told me once to be good, if I knew how. I wish-- "

She waited, unwilling to meet his eyes, hoping he would go on. When he didn't, the silence stretched between them like invisible cobwebs. In the dimmest part of her, she realized she might have wishes, too, elusive wishes that belonged more to a girl in a garden than they did to a captive.

Leon cleared his throat. "That baby," he said finally. "The one, you know, from the executed convict. I thought you d want to know. It turns out that baby made its way to the black market."

Gaia's eyes widened. Could he have arranged it? The significance of his news was not lost on her. If he had saved that baby, he had done so because of Gaia. For her. And it couldn't have been easy. "Thank you," she said.

He turned his hat once more in his hand, then dipped his head to put it on and started through the garden.

Gaia followed him out and waited as he carefully closed the gate, causing a light click. It meant a lot to her that he'd given the doomed baby a chance. And the orange. He had done what he could for her, just as he'd said he would, and even though he remained a guard and part of a corrupt system, she was grateful.

They were nearing the center of town when she stopped a moment to catch her breath. She glanced up to find him studying her, but with a new easiness. Gaia smelled freshly baking bread and instinctively turned to the alluring scent. She looked up a small lane, and there, hanging from an iron bar, was a wooden sign with a carved sheaf of wheat.

"Buy me some bread," she said quietly.

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He slid his hands in his pockets and leaned back in a friendly way for a moment. "That, Masister Stone, is impossible."

Pleasure shot through her, and she saw he was almost smiling. She stepped closer to him, until the buttons of her dress nearly touched his chest, and when she tilted her face to look up into his, their hat brims all but met. She felt unbelievably bold, and she liked it. She heard him breathe inward. His pupils dilated, and he seemed to freeze for a moment, but he didn't draw back.

"Leon," she said softly. "I may go into that prison and never come out again. I want some bread."

His keen blue eyes narrowed slightly, and then she saw him lick his lower lip. She had trouble breathing. It struck her how handsome he would be if he ever allowed himself to smile, and then, naturally, she felt her own lips begin to curve, encouraging him.

Leon backed up a half step, closed his eyes, and nodded.

A flash of embarrassment hit her. Her cheeks burned with a rush of color. She had actually believed, for an instant, that she was attractive to him. And he had kindly pretended to forget, for an instant, that she had a half hideous face. She grew dizzy with mortification.

"Forget it," she muttered.

"No," he said, and though he didn't meet her eyes, he grasped her wrist tightly and drew her up the lane, into the bakery. The warm, yeast laden air carried a rich, healing scent that permeated her face and filled her lungs as she entered, easing some of the shame she felt.

"A loaf of black bread, Mabrother," Leon said, releasing Gaia.

The baker s eyes flashed from him to Gaia in her gray prison uniform, and then back, revealing nothing. Rubbing her wrist, Gaia looked over the tall counter and saw what she was looking for: a vast brick oven, black as night. As the baker wrapped

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the small crusty loaf in a sheet of brown paper, she studied his face, memorising his sharp nose and bushy white brows. His arms were muscled, his white apron dirty with dried bits of dough. When he took Leon s coin, he gave a brief nod and dropped it with a clink into a box behind the counter.

"Will there be anything else, then, Mabrother?" the baker said. His voice was rich and round.

"No. Thank you," Leon said.

"I serve the Enclave," the baker said.

"And I," Leon said.

"And I," Gaia whispered.

The baker gave her another sharp look with his small black eyes. Then he took a step back and gently placed his hand on the brickwork of the oven. Nothing more. It was a small, natural gesture, but seeing it, Gaia felt her heart slide against her ribs. It was a message, a sign, and when she met the bakers eyes again, he nodded infinitesimally. She looked hurriedly away, stepping out of the shop before Leon would notice.

She didn't dare to look back into the bakery, but she knew the baker would be watching her still. He was Derek's friend. She'd forgotten his name, but she knew he was to be trusted. She could barely hide her thrill.

Leon passed her the small loaf of bread. "Do you have a pocket?" he asked. "It will hardly do to march in with every one seeing I've bought you a gift."

She took a gulping bite of the loaf, nearly moaning with the tasty goodness of the clean, warm bread and her new speck of hope. On instinct, she offered it back to him. His eyebrows lifted with surprise. He took a quick glance down the narrow lane, but they were alone. He broke off a piece and bit into it with white teeth.

Gaia tucked the remaining piece into the sleeve of her dress. Wouldn't the others be amazed when she came into Q cell

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with real, fresh bread to share? There would be a small bite for each.

Leon swallowed and his expression sobered. "Please remember," he said. "Cooperate with them."

"How soon should I expect this interrogation?"

"Soon. Tomorrow or the next day."

She licked her tongue over her teeth for the last taste of bread. It wouldn't do her any good to know a baker if she was lost in an interrogation deep in the prison. She needed to get to him soon. As they returned to the main road, Leon adopted a purposeful pace, and Gaia hurried beside him.

"There's something I don't understand," she said. "Why are you in the guard? If your father's the Protectorat, why are you serving the Enclave like any uneducated man from outside the wall?"

"You forget. I am from outside the wall," he said dryly.

"That isn't what I mean," she said.

They had reached the square now, and Gaia slowed at the sight of the arch leading to the prison. A heavy, late afternoon shadow slanted across half of the square, though light was still bright on the yellow stonework of the Bastion itself. The building had different significance to her now that she knew Leon had grown up inside it, part of the Protectorat's family.

"My father disowned me," Leon said abruptly. "It's no secret. I'm in disgrace, and yet they feel compelled to keep an eye on me. What better place than the guard?"

They were nearly at the prison entrance now, and Gaia was afraid he wouldn't have time to tell her before they were surrounded by other guards. Even now, people in the square were watching, curious to see a guard talking tête-à-tête with a prisoner.

"What did you do?" she asked.

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She saw his profile turn toward the Bastion, as if he could see through its walls to the people within, and then he turned his ironic gaze upon her.

"A crime against the state," he said, his voice cool.

The change in him was startling. Gaia didn't understand what he was telling her, or even if he was speaking the truth. She did know that only something that hurt deeply could make a person so bitter.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

His eyebrows lifted in mild surprise and a hint of disdain. "Don 't be," he said. "I got just what I deserved."

They passed beneath the stone arch, and he signaled to the two guards who stood before the wooden doors.

"Take her to Q cell," he commanded. "She's clear."

"Yes, Captain," the guard said.

Gaia slowly took off her hat and felt the chill of the stone walls settle around her as the door closed, leaving the sunlight and Leon outdoors.

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Chapter 14 A Crime Against the State

THAT NIGHT, as Gaia shared her fresh black bread in Q cell, the other women were openly astonished that Leon had bought it for her. She was tempted to tell them about the freckles and her fear that she would be interrogated again soon, but she had a new fear now. What if one of them passed on any' thing she said to the guards? She had trusted Sephie, and even though Leon had argued that Sephie had not betrayed Gaia, it felt like betrayal to her. The women were even more astounded to hear Sephie was free and back to her old life.

"So then, there's hope," Cotty said. "Any of us could be set free."

There was a buzz, among the women, and Gaia saw the light in their eyes. Hope was intoxicating. One of the women giggled. Only Myrna, sitting apart and reading a frayed book by tilting it toward the light from the window, continued to look unimpressed. When she glanced up from under her black eyebrows, Gaia knew Myrna guessed there was more to her story.

"Watch out for him," Myrna said.

Gaia looked away in confusion, beginning to blush, and

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that seemed to confirm something for Myrna. She nodded, setting a finger in her book as she closed the pages.

"Don't underestimate the Enclave," Myrna said. "They're using him, just like they're using all of us."

"Even you?" Gaia said.

Myrna gave a short laugh, as if Gaia amused her. "I'd say so. They've taken everything from me, and I still work for them."

The other women's voices quieted.

"Pay no attention to her," Cotty said.

"No," Gaia said. "Why, Myrna? Why do you do it? Why don't you give up, or walk away and get shot? What keeps you going?"

"Good gracious," Cotty said.

Myrna stretched her jaw and looked coldly at Gaia. "Truth' fully? I can't stand to think of being outlived by the idiots."

Cotty and the others began to laugh, and Gaia thought she understood what Myrna meant.

"I want to hear about Captain Grey. What's he like?" Cotty asked. Her open, curious expression made her seem younger, despite the lines in her dark face. "I mean, I used to see him with the Protectorat. Everyone did. But I've never talked to him like you have. He's an awfully handsome young man."

"Does everybody know he's the Protectorat's son?" Gaia asked.

Cotty and the others exchanged glances. "I'd say so," Cotty said.

Gaia felt like a moron.

"You didn't know!" Cotty said, laughing. "I tell you, these people outside the wall. It's like you're from another world."

Gaia crossed her arms defensively. "It's not like I'd never heard of him," she explained. "I just didn't realise that's who he was."

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"Oh, this is great," Cotty said. "I want to hear all about it."

Gaia wasn't sure how to answer, but she could see the others, all except Myrna, were watching her curiously. They welcomed any topic that distracted them from their own bleak prospects, and she was learning what power existed in the smallest news from outside the prison walls, but she wasn't certain what she could say about him. Besides, she still felt like she ought to have known who he was somehow. As if it made a difference. Gaia picked at a last crumb of bread on the gray fabric that covered her lap. "I don't know," she hedged.

Gotty laughed. "You like him!"

"No," Gaia protested.

But the other women were smiling now, too, and Gaia could feel her cheeks getting warm.

"That's ridiculous," Gaia said. "I hardly know him. Besides, I know how hideous I am."

Cotty leaned her head back against the wall, and her shoulders looked relaxed and comfortable for once. "You know, I thought so at first," Cotty said. "But you get used to your face. I always watch the pretty side of you now, and the other side sort of vanishes into a blind spot."

The others murmured. Gaia was frankly disbelieving. She'd lived with her own ugliness for so long, hiding it behind the curtain of her hair whenever possible, that there was no way she'd believe anyone else could find her pretty. Unbidden, she pictured Leon walking beside her, and realized he'd positioned himself on her unscarred side. It was natural to avoid her disfigurement; it didn't mean he could find her pretty.

Even if he did almost kiss her.

She closed her eyes and repressed a groan.

"What's he like?" said Brooke, another one of the prisoners. Brooke was a tall, gangly woman with deep circles under her

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eyes and a long, narrow nose. She set aside the anatomy chart and smiled encouragingly

Gaia looked down at her own hands. What does it matter if I indulge them? she thought. "It's hard to say. When I first met him, he had just arrested my parents, and I was afraid of him. He seemed serious and cold to me then. Really cold, actually. Now I think it's more that he's reserved," she said. She frowned. "He's quite courteous and well spoken, which makes sense now, I suppose." She remembered the baby she'd de' livered from the hanged mother and how he'd saved it. She couldn't tell them about that, either. "I used to think he could be cruel," she added quietly, "but now I'm not so sure." He could be manipulative, she thought, glancing briefly at Myrna. The discovery that he was from outside the wall was too personal, too confidential to tell them, and for some reason she didn't want to tell them that the orange was from him, either. "It's hard to reconcile his gentle manners with him being in the guard. It's like he doesn't fit anywhere."

The women nodded. "Well, and the bread was certainly a surprise. He must have a generous streak in him somewhere. He was raised in the Bastion, you know," Brooke said.

"Until they kicked him out," Gotty added. "When was that? Two ... no, three years ago."

Gaia glanced at the other women to see this was common knowledge among them. "He hasn't been on the Tvaltar for longer than that. Do you know why?" Gaia asked.

Cotty passed Gaia a skein of blue wool. "Roll that for me, would you?" she said. "He was on pretty regularly until he was ten or so. Then he faded out. They started doing more individual profiles of the younger kids. I don't know. I was kind of curious about Leon."

Brooke nodded. "Me, too. But then it became a respect-our-privacy thing as the kids got older."

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Gaia found the end of the yarn and absently passed the first few loops of it around three of her fingers. "Why did they disown him?" she asked.

Cotty made a clucking noise. "It was all very hush-hush. He must have been, what, around sixteen then? It was about the time of that unfortunate accident with his sister, too. Fiona. A tragedy, that."

Gaia looked around expectantly, hoping one of the other women would elaborate. Cotty s knitting needles made a steady clicking. Myrna was sitting with her book open again, conspicuously refraining from joining the gossip.

"What happened to her?" Gaia asked. "I mean, I remember she died in an accident, but how?"

"Fiona fell," Brooke said. "From her bedroom window one night. Broke her neck."

Gaia felt an eerie tingle of alarm, remembering the way Leon had warned her away from the cliff in the garden. She wondered if he had been thinking then of his stepsister. "After Fiona's death, there was hardly ever anything about the Protectorate family on the Tvaltar," Gaia said, remembering more now. "Genevieve. I remember a photo of her crying at the funeral."

Brooke nodded, and Cotty made a sympathetic humming noise. "Very unfortunate," Cotty repeated. "The whole business. Best not to talk about it."

"But what did Leon do to get disowned?" Gaia pressed. "What's a crime against the state?"

The women looked nervously at each other, but no one spoke until Myrna turned her flat black eyes on Gaia. "It's a genetic crime," she said.

"Like what?"

She looked at Cotty and Brooke.

"Like what we're accused of," Cotty said.

Gaia remembered what the doctors had first told her, but

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she was confused. "How could Leon have falsified genetic tests or helped with an abortion?"

Cotty and Brooke said nothing. Gaia looked around the circle of women, and then finally to Myrna.

"He slept with his aunt," Myrna said.

"No," Gaia said, aghast.

Myrna shrugged, looking at her book again. "It's what I heard."

Gaia turned beseechingly to Cotty. "Is it true?" she whispered.

"No," Cotty said, scowling at Myrna. "That was just a rumor. There were all kinds of crazy rumors, not half of them true, I'm sure. His Aunt Maura is ten years older than him and a very genteel, married woman. I'm sure she'd never do such a thing. Myrna, you should know better than to torment the girl."

Myrna merely rolled her eyes as if she found them both incredibly boring.

"But then, what did happen?" Gaia asked Cotty.

"Well, I don't know exactly. Nobody knows," Cotty said. "We could gossip until we're blue in the face, but nobody has any facts. Frankly, I thought it was pretty disgusting, all the speculation there was. For a while there, it sounded like he'd slept with every girl in the Bastion, which was obviously not true. Any way, he took his mother's maiden name, Grey, for his last name and joined the guard, and we didn't hear much more about him."

Gaia slowly rolled more blue yarn around her fingers. "Why didn't this gossip make it outside the wall?" she asked.

"I'm sure it did," Cotty said. "It must have. Maybe you just weren't listening."

Gaia must have been twelve or thirteen at the time, she reasoned. Her parents, never much for gossip, might have talked about it a little, and Old Meg certainly would have talked about it, but it hadn't made an impact on Gaia. She had known that

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Fiona had died, but she certainly hadn't registered Leon's new last name. Perhaps his scandal had been overshadowed by the mourning.

Now she pondered the little bit she knew, troubled by the sordid possibilities. She couldn't believe Leon had slept with his aunt. The idea was sick. It would violate everything decent she knew about him. She could not believe it, but certainly something had happened to cause his disgrace. He felt he de' served it.

That was the key. Her hands stilled on the ball of yarn, and she let her gaze drift up to the windows. No matter what the rumors were, Leon believed he'd done something wrong, some evil that warranted exclusion from his family and a life in the guard. That existence, carrying out the Enclave's laws without question, had stymied everything else in his nature, and in essence, he'd chosen that. He'd chosen to surrender his own ethics. He'd chosen to become callous.

She glanced up at Myrna to find the older woman looking at her through tired eyes. She felt a chill around her heart, remembering Myrna's warning: they'll use you. And him.

"Give it enough time, and this place will destroy even you," Myrna said softly.

Gaia stood, handed the ball of yarn back to Cotty, and walked into her bedroom cell.

After dinner, while the others were walking in the court' yard, Cotty sewed a pocket inside the waistband of Gaia's dress for her. "In case you get more bread," Cotty said, patting the fabric smooth before she gave back the dress. "Or anything else. You can smuggle in treats for us."

Gaia smiled, thanking her, but she doubted she 'would have more opportunities to walk with Leon as Cotty was obviously implying. Gaia pulled the dress over her head.

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"Can I ask you something?" Gaia asked softly, working the buttons. "Have you known Myrna long?"

Cotty gave a brief laugh and poked her needle into a spool of gray thread. "You want to know why she's so mean, don't you?" Cotty said.

Gaia wouldn't have put it that bluntly, but now she nodded.

"She has a heart, I know that," Cotty said slowly. "But I think she pushes people away before they can disappoint her. I heard she was married briefly, long ago, and it ended badly. I know for certain she's been thwarted about wanting to start a clinic. She argued that we need a blood bank for the hemophiliacs and a teaching clinic for doctors, but the Protectorat flatly refuses."

"Why?" Gaia asked.

Cotty shook her head, putting her spools and scissors in a little box. "It was one of the founding principles: no hospitals, no extreme medicine. Just antibiotics and morphine. They thought anything more just catered to the weak. It was a choice about resources, brutal but necessary. Now Myrna thinks things have changed."

Gaia gazed up at the three windows, puzzling over the possibilities. "She's a good doctor. If she were in charge, more people might live longer."

"I agree. But the Protectorat has his point, too. There's no shame in dying. His focus is on the whole population, what's best for everyone, not what's best for an individual. He and Myrna just come from different perspectives."

"And he's in charge," Gaia said dryly.

Cotty made a soft clucking noise, and Gaia glanced over to see her warm, crooked smile. "Don't you worry about Myrna," Cotty said kindly. "She's mean, but she's smart. And she's not like Sephie."

"How do you mean?" Gaia asked, puzzled.

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Cotty gave a sideways, apologetic glance. "I don 't like to speak ill of someone who's not here. Let me just say, it's easy to like Sephie because she's so warm and friendly. But when she has to, she'll always choose the easiest route."

Gaia grew uncomfortable, not certain -what to say.

"I'm sorry," Cotty continued. "I was only trying to say, you can count on Myrna." She rubbed the bridge of her nose thoughtfully. "Maybe that's why she's here."

That night, when the others were asleep, Gaia took out her little mirror and tried to see her face in the darkness. It was pointless, of course. The little oval mocked her by reflecting only the near-black of the night shadows, as if she herself were invisible. She ran her thumb slowly over the smooth surface of the glass, and then slid the mirror into her new pocket. At night, with nothing to distract her, she missed her mother and father so intensely, the loneliness invaded her heart like a cold, soundless mist. Myrna, Leon, and even Cotty-- these new people in her life didn't know her. They didn't know who she really was inside, or the intricate workings of her heart. There was nobody now who really loved her, she realized.

Nobody but her mother, wherever she was. Gaia had a flashing memory of her mother standing at the edge of the back porch, her face turned up toward the sunlight, squinting and half smiling as she reached up to untangle the strands of the wind chime.

You really should brush your hair back, Gaia. Let me braid it for you.

Unbidden tears crowded against Gaia's eyelids. Her hair was short now. Her mother was gone. She turned her head against her flat mattress, automatically keeping the tender skin of her scar upward, and told herself she would not cry.

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Chapter 15 The Yellow Pincushion

It WAS BARELY LIGHT when the guards came.

"Gaia Stone!" a man 's voice yelled.

She rolled out of bed, her bare feet hitting the cold floor.

Myrna ran in and gripped her arms tightly, pulling her near in a sudden, fierce hug. "They're here for you," she whispered tersely. "Stay strong. Remember, whatever you do, whatever you say, your first job is to survive."

Gaia clutched at her, terrified, as the guard entered the bed' room and jerked Gaia away.

"Shoes!" he yelled. "Where are your shoes?"

Gaia looked to the floor, where the shoes lay, and Myrna picked them up and thrust them to Gaia.

"Quickly!" the guard yelled again, and the instant her shoes were on, he grabbed her again and roughly tied her hands behind her back.

"Where are you taking her?" Cotty asked.

The other women came from their rooms, too, and watched in horror as the guards hurried Gaia toward the door. As one of them began to cry, Gaia was reminded of the day they took Sephie away. She had one last look over her shoulder at Myrna,

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who was standing alone under the windows while the other women grouped together in a terrified hug. Myrna's stony face was harsh with bitterness, and her fists were clenched rigidly at her sides.

"You hear me? Your first job is to survived Myrna repeated.

The door banged shut behind her. If Gaia had ever believed the older doctor was indifferent to her, she knew now she was wrong. What Gotty had said was true. The sharp commands, the sarcasm: these were Myrna s version of affection, and now Gaia clung to Myrna's last words of advice.

The next moment, Gaia was being hauled up the stairs and along another hallway. She was barely able to keep on her feet, and she was prevented from falling only by the rough grasp of the guards who held her arms, one on each side. When they reached the main entrance, she looked around desperately, hoping to see Leon, but there were only more unfamiliar guards dressed in black. Half a dozen of them fell into step around her as they left the prison, passing under the stone arch into the cool, dim air of the deserted square. A swirl of fog enshrouded the obelisk in the middle of the square.

With a jolt, she remember the first day she was there, when a man was dragged to the Bastion at dawn, just as she was being dragged. Later the pregnant woman and her husband had been hanged. Terror coursed through her, and her feet refused to propel her forward.

"Come now," the guard on her left said roughly, jerking her so that she half fell out of her loose loafers.

Gaia gasped in pain as her tied hands twisted in the tight rope, and then she lunged forward between the guards. When they led her straight toward the Bastion, Gaia's alarm mush' roomed with the cold air in her lungs.

"No," she whispered.

"You'll come, and no more fuss," the guard said in her ear.

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Gaia recoiled, but the two guards lifted her by her arms up the stairs, and plopped her back on her feet when they arrived at the door. As they waited for the door to be opened, Gaia had her first chance to catch her breath. One of the guards leaned nearer, and lightly lifted the bangs that had fallen fop ward over her eyes.

Gaia jerked her head back, glaring at him.

"Ha," the man said, his breath sour in her face. "I thought we had a pretty one here, but she's right disgusting."

The guard in the front turned slightly. "That's how we know we've got the right one," he said briefly. "Her scar."

Gaia burned with resentment, but anything was better than the unthinking panic she'd felt before. She stood straighter now, eyeing the first guard coldly. His eyes protruded and a mottled, bulbous nose overhung his lips as he leered at her. Pride took hold and saved her from reacting to him. She turned her gaze forward, toward the door.

The guard gave her arm a sharp pinch, and she gasped.

"Think you're better than me?" he whispered.

She clenched her teeth, hoping desperately that this man would not be in charge of her for long.

"You're nothing but a cheap slut from outside the wall," he hissed.

Then the door opened, and she was ushered into a lighted hallway that smelled unexpectedly of some faint perfume. The guards fell silent and after a last shove, they allowed her a little distance.

She was standing in a vast, open space that was completely antithetical to the plain, practical facade of the building. Nothing she had ever seen on the Tvaltar had prepared her for this sight. A pair of potted gardenia bushes, responsible for the pure fragrance, stood at the bottom of a grand, white staircase that ascended in a double curve upward, out of sight. White tiles,

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with smaller inlays of black tile in a whimsical, geometric pat-tern, graced the floor. Beyond the staircase, the walls seemed to be made entirely of French doors and she saw the green light of a solarium behind the panes. To Gaia's immediate left and right were enormous matching wooden doors, both sets carved with figures and trees.

Gaia stood waiting among her guards, grateful for their silence, and then, unexpectedly, she heard a snatch of childish laughter come from somewhere in the back of the house. A small boy of two or three years came running around the corner in a bright blue nightshirt and a pair of fluffy pink slippers that were clearly too big for him. He carried a small yellow ball. His laughter was a bright, joyful noise, completely in' congruous with the desperate situation she found herself in, and she stood still, caught in anticipation, knowing that any moment he would see her and the guards.

He was moving so fast that he'd gotten partly past their group before he saw them, and then he skidded in his slippers, his laughter abruptly gone. She watched his foot catch against his own ankle, and then he was down, sprawled in a blue heap on the white tile, and his ball was jarred loose from his hand. Instinctively, she took a half step toward him, but strong hands held her back.

The small yellow ball skidded forward across the white and black tiles, landed before her, and proved to be her father's lemon-shaped pincushion. Gaia was astounded. By what circuitous route could the pincushion have traveled from Leon's pocket to become this child's plaything?

The next moment, an older girl of nine or ten came running around in the path of the boy. Her blond, wavy hair stood out around her pink-cheeked face in a glorious haze.

"Michael!" she called, her voice breathless with mirth. "If you don't give me back my slippers-- " Her voice broke off as

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she saw them, and she stumbled to a stop. The boy scrambled forward to grab the pincushion just as she ran to him, crouching to scoop him up into his arms.

"Aunt Genevieve!" she screamed. She was backing up the way she'd come, carrying the heavy child.

A third person now came wrathfully around the corner. "What on earth?" she demanded.

Gaia stared. This was the woman she'd seen only the day before, when she was walking with Leon: Genevieve Quarry, the Protectorate wife. And she looked furious.

"Britta. Take him back to the kitchen. Immediately," Genevieve said to the girl.

As the children backed away another step, and then hurried away, Genevieve stormed forward.

"How dare you," she demanded, her cultured voice scathing even at a hush.

"Excuse me, Masister Quarry," the guard said. "I was told to bring her to Mabrother Iris first thing."

Gaia felt Genevieve's piercing gaze turn to her, and she instinctively backed up.

"Then do your job," Genevieve said contemptuously to the guard. She rapped on the door to Gaia's left, and instantly it was opened from within.

"Get this rabble out of my foyer, Winston," Genevieve said.

"I beg your pardon," Winston said smoothly, stepping aside and gesturing Gaia's group inside. "An oversight that will not be repeated."

Genevieve was already disappearing toward the depths of the house. "Miles will hear of this," she said over her shoulder, and her quiet voice carried clearly.

Winston was a stocky, middle-aged doorkeeper with a small mouth and little expression, even when he was being scolded. He merely nodded again, hurried them inside, and closed the door.

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Gaia expected Winston to chastise the other guards, but he said nothing, leading them down a hallway. "Watch the step there," he said courteously, pointing, as he preceded them down two stairs, and then guided them down several passages. Gaia passed a row of tall windows, each offering a glimpse of the fog and the denser silhouette of the monument.

When Winston led them next up a staircase, a practical, boxy one with narrow treads, Gaia had the impression the Bastion had two distinct functions: the beautiful, gracious home that Genevieve and the children inhabited, and the no' nonsense part that she was entering as a bound prisoner. In a way, it's only a more extreme version of the society I already live in, Gaia thought, another division, like the one that separates those who live inside and outside the wall. She had just seen where the worlds collided.

"Here, one moment," Winston said finally, pausing before a tall, wooden door. Other similar doors lined the hallway. There was a carpet runner down the center of the hall and 'windows at both ends.

Winston knocked, and a voice invited them in. Gaia stepped into a large, airy room, lined with books and carpeted with a sumptuous rug that muffled her footsteps. A yellow canary made a skittering noise in a cage by one of the windows.

"What's this?" An annoyed voice spoke, and Gaia saw a small, gray haired man with glasses and slumped shoulders peer at them from over a desk. His white clothing had trim, tailored lines without appearing to be strictly a uniform. It was a peculiar desk, with a glass top and a light shining through it from below, so that the man s face was lit under his chin and nose and eyebrows, giving him an unearthly appearance.

"It's the scarred girl from outside," the guard said. "Gaia Stone."

"I can see that," the man said irritably. "What's with the rest of you?"

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The guards stood stupidly for a moment.

Winston cleared his throat. "Thank you," he said to the head guard. "We can take it from here."

The guard set his jaw stubbornly. "She's dangerous. I'm supposed to take every precaution."

"Indeed," Winston said. "And you have done so. Let me show you out."

Gaia was left standing beside the door as it closed gently, and the last noise of the guards and Winston could be heard receding down the hallway. Her hands were still tied behind her and her gray dress was rumpled from all the jerking she'd been subjected to, but she took a deep breath and told herself to remain calm. She stood quietly, waiting. Based on what the guard had told the Protectorat's wife, she realized the old man must be Mabrother Iris. He doesn't look\ lie a torturer, she thought cautiously, and this seems more like a library than a prison cell. But still. She wondered briefly what would have happened if, weeks ago, she had reported to the south gate with her ribbon and asked to see Mabrother Iris, as Leon had advised her to do.

He adjusted his glasses, his attention still on his desk. Gaia took a slight step forward and noticed that the top of the desk was like an enormous television set, but with a dozen screens overlapping at once.

"Come," he said impatiently.

As Gaia stepped silently across the thick carpet, he touched the top of the desk with his fingertip, and a scene appeared: a father beside the unlake, and a red haired woman dandling a baby before her. The sun was just coming up, and both parents were dressed in simple work clothes. The woman let her hat fall back and hang from the strings around her neck. They were smiling and their mouths moved, but Gaia couldn't hear their voices.

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"Yes, come here," the man said, beckoning her to come stand beside him. "Precisely here. Not too close," he said, wrinkling his nose as if she smelled.

"Are you Mabrother Iris?" she asked.

"Watch," he commanded, pointing to the screen.

Gaia looked more carefully, and when she realized the woman in the screen was Emily, she impulsively smiled. "Oh!" she said. "I know them! Emily's had her baby, then. Is it a boy?"

"Yes," the man said.

She was puzzled. "When was she in a movie?" she asked.

"Unbelievable," the man muttered to himself. "It's now, girl," he said. "There's a camera focused on them now. They're taking a morning walk before they go to work."

As Gaia grasped what he was saying, she realized there must be cameras aimed strategically around Wharfton. She'd always supposed there were a few informants in Wharfton who relayed information to the Enclave, but she hadn't guessed there were actually cameras spying on them in real time. That's how the Enclave seemed to know everything as soon as it happened.

"Do you have cameras everywhere?" she asked.

"Watch now," the man said. "This is a lesson for you."

"If you're Mabrother Iris," she said nervously. "Do you know where my mother is?"

The man gripped Gaia's arm with unexpected strength and pushed his face near to her own. "Of course I know where your mother is. But now, you need to watch this."

He slapped his hand down upon the desk so hard the images vibrated for a moment. Gaia was stunned that he spoke of her mother in the present tense; that he knew where she was.

With a surge of hope, she obediently turned her gaze to the screen on his desk and saw a raven, huge and black, settle on the stones by Emily's feet. Kyle pointed it out with big, goofy

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gestures, but the baby was far too young to appreciate a bird, and instead continued to gurgle at his mom. Gaia could see Emily say something, laughing.

Mabrother Iris pushed a little button on the edge of the desk. "Take out the bird," he said.

At first nothing changed, except that Emily passed the baby to his dad. Then there was a blur of black at the edge of the screen and the parents simultaneously jumped in alarm. At their feet, the bird was reduced to a motionless mass of feathers with one crooked foot pleading upward. The camera view zoomed out, shrinking the image of the parents, who were running with their baby as fast as possible back toward the houses of Wharfton. Emily's auburn hair flew wildly behind her, and though there was no sound, Gaia saw that she was crying out in panic and fear.

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Chapter 16 Cooperation

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?" she asked, uncomprehending. She had known the Enclave could be systematically cruel, as when they executed prisoners in the Square of the Bastion, but the bird had been harmless. The cruelty was so pointless. The horror of it, the scope of his power, made her cold. As Mabrother Iris turned deliberately, watching Gaia intently, she backed away.

"You commanded a soldier on the wall to shoot the bird," she said. "What if his aim had been poor?"

Mabrother Iris lifted his tinted glasses and propped them in the gray hair on top of his head. The pupils of his eyes were preternaturally dilated, reducing his irises to the narrowest rings of pale blue. "I need to be certain I have your entire CO' operation," he said.

"Or what?" she asked, breathless. "You'll kill me?"

He tilted his face slightly, contemplating her with fathom' less eyes. "No. Emily's baby, maybe. Or Sephie Frank. You liked her, didn't you? Or how about Leon?" His voice was deceptively casual.

"You wouldn't."

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"How about your mother?" he added.

She shook her head stiffly, her mind scrambling to keep up with each evermore painful threat. "I don 't even believe she's still alive." The hard truth hit her again. "You lied to give your' self more leverage."

The man stepped nearer the desk again. "Maybe not so stupid after all," he muttered, and touched the desk with his fingertip.

A new screen popped up, and in spite of herself, Gaia stepped near again to see better. It was a view of three women sleeping in a semicircular space enclosed by stone walls. Gaia could see they were on cots, with gray blankets. It might have been a black-and-white photo, it was so devoid of color and motion, except that once a curtain swelled in a silent wind. Gaia tried to make out their faces, to glean any clue from the scene that would show her where they were. She saw a black chain leading to one of the beds. Gould the women be shackled?

"You cant tell now," he said. "But the middle one's your mother."

"Where are they?" Gaia asked, peering closely, willing the woman to roll over so she could see her face and be certain.

The man touched the desktop, and it went dark. Gaia blinked and stepped back several paces until her legs hit against a chair.

"Perhaps," he said slowly, lowering his glasses over his eyes again, "if you cooperate, I could arrange for you to see her."

"Gould you really?"

"Indeed I could."

Torn, Gaia twisted her fingers into fists behind her back, instinctively straining against the ropes. Mild as he looked, she understood that he had the power of life and death over all the people he could see in his screen desk. Conversely, Leon had told her the Enclave rewarded loyalty. The choices were clear:

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cooperate and see your mother. Resist, and shell be killed. Gaia felt sick to her stomach.

"Sit, please," Mabrother Iris said.

She sat gingerly on the edge of the upholstered chair behind her, touching the cushiony satin behind her back with her fingertips for balance. If only she knew what her parents would want her to do. Since her father had been shot escaping, he must have believed that anything was better than cooperating with the Enclave, even death. But her mother lived still. Had she found a way to resist and still be alive? Gaia couldn't bear to think that anything she might do could put her mother in even greater danger. "What do you want me to do?" Gaia said, her voice small.

For the first time, Mabrother Iris's lips curved in a slight smile. "There," he said. "I knew you'd be reasonable. You've always served the Enclave well, aside from that one ridiculous aberration after the hanging."

Gaia's cheeks flamed. "Yes," she improvised. "I'm sorry. I didn't know the laws then."

He shrugged. "Your training was left to chance, essentially," he said. "You no doubt absorbed some misguided ethical sense that saving a baby 's life is more important than obeying the laws of the Enclave. But our laws exist for the greater good, and it's not for you to flout them."

She lowered her face, hoping she looked suitably humble. This man believed, completely, that what he was doing was right. That made him even more terrifying. Mabrother Iris re' settled his glasses on his nose and turned to touch the screen again.

"I need you to tell me what you know about your mother s ribbon," he said.

Gaia tensed, remembering Leon's warning. "I don't know much," she began. "I think it's a code. I was told to keep it safe

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and not to lose it." She neglected to add that her mother had warned her to destroy it.

"Who told you this? Your mother?"

She shook her head. Hopefully Old Meg was long gone by now and safe in the Dead Forest. If not, she had probably perished on the way. Gaia hesitated a second, then remembered how ruthlessly Mabrother Iris had commanded the shooting of the bird. She could not resist him now. "Old Meg," she said. "She was my mothers friend. She gave the ribbon to me the same night my parents were arrested."

He frowned slightly, and Gaia guessed this was something he had not known. It gave her a modicum of hope. Maybe he would decide she could be useful to him.

"Where is Old Meg now?" he asked.

She averted her eyes, looking at the tall windows to her right. She could see the top of the obelisk emerging through the fog. She shifted uncomfortably on her chair, her hands still tied behind her back.

"Answer me!" he said sharply.

Gaia jumped. The canary made a cheap from its cage. "She left," she said. "She said she was leaving town."

"No one leaves town," he said. "Did she say where she was going?"

Gaia swallowed hard. "To the wasteland. To the Dead Forest."

Mabrother Iris's eyebrows lifted in amusement.

"What is it?" she asked.

"The Dead Forest doesn't exist," he said. "It's a place from a fairy tale."

She was confused. "But-- "

He was shaking his head now, his eyes warming slightly through the tinted lenses. "I keep forgetting you're a child," he said. "From outside the wall, no less." He paused, and rubbed

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his chin. "This could take some time, I see," he mused. He leaned over the picture table and pushed a button. "I need a room prepared," he said softly. "No, the third floor. And you might as well arrange a shower and fresh clothes for her. There's a slight stench."

Gaia felt her face redden, but she tried to resist her first reaction of shame. It wasn't her fault the prison didn't give her a chance to clean herself frequently. The man was inspecting her.

"Are you thirsty?" he asked.

She nodded. She hadn't eaten that morning. The man reached over to a teapot she hadn't noticed before on a nearby table and poured a cup of tea. The redolent aroma drifted across the room, and she was wondering how she would drink it with her hands tied when he lifted the cup to his own lips.

"Tell me more about the ribbon," he said.

Her thirst, hardly noticeable before, now intensified, and she eyed his cup enviously as he cradled it between his fingers.

"I don't know anything more," she said.

"You promised to cooperate," he reminded her.

"I know," she said. "I am." She struggled to find the right words. "Ask me something."

"Did your mother bring the ribbon with her when you went to deliver babies?"

"No," she said.

"Did she ever show it to you before the night Old Meg gave it to you?"

"No," she said. "I didn't know it existed."

"Did your mother ever write you notes with unusual alpha-bets?"

Gaia's heart jumped in her chest. She licked her lips. "No," she said.

"I can tell when you're lying," he said mildly.